Elements of Foucault

Gregg Lambert is Dean’s Professor of Humanities at Syracuse University and Distinguished International Scholar at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. He is founding director of the Syracuse University Humanities Center and the Society for the Study of Biopolitical Futures. Lambert is author of thirteen books, most recently In Search of a New Image of Thought: Gilles Deleuze and Philosophical Expressionism and Philosophy after Friendship: Deleuze’s Conceptual Personae (both from Minnesota).

• ContentsArticle I. On “Foucault”Article II. On the Elements of Biopower (Circa 1975–1979)1. MethodFoucault’s More GeometricoThe Problem of “Rationalizing Power”The Axiomatic Method of AnalysisThe Rules of Immanence2. Conceptual Device“What is a Dispositif?”The “Deployment” of Sexuality“The Category of the Subject and its Functioning”The Birth of the Cartesian Dispositif3. Grid of IntelligibilityToward a Government of the LivingThe Principle of VitalpolitikThe Society of ControlThe Problem of an “Inflationary Theory of the State”Article III. On the Mutations of Biopower (Post-1984)AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

"In this provocative and highly original text, Gregg Lambert challenges the standard view that Michel Foucault’s works are discontinuous by showing that Foucault does not leave his past ideas behind, but rather incorporates them into new constellations as he confronts new problems. By introducing a fourth element-milieu-into Foucault’s analysis of biopower to supplement the elements of method, dispositif, and grid of intelligibility, Lambert’s self-described mutation of biopower will be required reading for any serious Foucault scholar."-Alan D. Schrift, author of Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers"Gregg Lambert's study of Michel Foucault's work from the formulation of the concept of discipline to the notion of biopower demonstrates the inadequacy of interpretations that offer either an evolutionary or devolutionary reading of its movement. He shows that, at every step, Foucault both retains and sets aside concepts elaborated in previous texts and does so in a purely provisional manner, subject to perpetual revision. Lambert takes us beyond the too obvious periodizations into which Foucault's work is so often divided and allows us to see the complexity and unevenness that give some of his most important contributions their singular power."-Warren Montag, Occidental College