Freedom plays an important role within Foucault’s analysis of a consolidated form of power he terms governmentality. Governmentality is defined by Foucault in terms of “…the whole range of practices that constitute, define, organize, and
instrumentalize the strategies that individuals in their freedom can use in dealing with each other.” (Foucault, 1997a: 300). Through his account of governmentality, Foucault expands a narrow notion of government to include not only management of the state, but all forms of directing conduct that act upon the possibilities of others actions and that structure the domain where these actions take place (Foucault, Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983: 220-221).
Individual freedom as characterized within liberalism with its aim of defending individual liberty against intrusions by state power is rejected outright by Foucault’s analysis of governmentality and his critique of liberal rationality when he argues that human freedom is not so much an outcome of liberalism but a requirement for its success
(Hindess, 1996: 124-125). The notion of governmentality was developed in Foucault’s later writing, providing a more intricate and illuminating account of the relationship between power and freedom8. What Foucault emphasizes in his later work is the manner
in which modern freedom is managed by techniques and rationalities of government that imply previous consent, but which are only possible because of the effectiveness of disciplinary power exercised in the past (Hindess, 1996: 131).
At this point it is helpful to provide an explanation of how governmentality differs from disciplinary power and biopower. Through defining the nature of power in terms of “guiding the possibility of conduct”, Foucault emphasizes that disciplinary power and biopower are two distinct yet related techniques for managing the behavior, conduct, attitudes and beliefs of human beings as individuals and as members of a population (Foucault, in Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983: 221). According to Foucault, to govern conduct,
8 Barry Hindess, although conceding that a shift occurred within Foucault’s early and later writing, argues
that Foucault’s later work on government does not undermine his earlier focus on domination, but instead provides a more complex and well developed account of power (Hindess, 1996: 130-131). Gordon (1999)
suggests that Foucault was merely examining different perspectives of the same concerns that were always
central to his work. There is some debate surrounding the notion of a conceptual shift within Foucault’s
understanding of power between his earlier and later work (see Sluga, 2011). Whether a break took place
within Foucault’s writing on power, or whether Foucault merely elaborated different perspectives of the same problem, as John Grumley (2006: 61-62) perceptively argues, the notion of freedom and its close
or to exercise power through governmentality, is to shape the possibilities within the realm in which human beings act (Foucault, in Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983: 221). In explaining power in terms of governmentality, Foucault is able to emphasize that as disciplinary subjects and as members of a population, we are still free human beings who act within a space of possibility:
When one defines the exercise of power as a mode of action upon the actions of others, when one characterizes these actions by the government of men by other men-in the broadest sense of the term-one includes an important element: freedom. (Foucault, in Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983: 221)
Governmentality is a consolidation of all forms of power, thus it is conditional upon ontologically free subjects whose future actualized freedoms it aims to shape (Foucault, in Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983: 221). The question of governmentality can be approached from the perspective of the government of the self and the relationship between self-understanding and our relations with others (Foucault, 1997a: 88). Self- understanding is shaped through particular societal practices known as technologies of the self, which always inform the manner in which individuals act upon themselves. (Foucault, 2003a: 146). Technologies of power and technologies of the self are intricately related through the way our self-understandings are shaped by societal values (Taylor,
2011: 173). In taking up the problem of how individuals constitute themselves through an exercise of “the self on the self” Foucault touches on the question of how human beings can creatively engage with their self-understandings in order to attain a particular way of living in the world (Foucault, 1997a: 282). This is an achievement of what Foucault terms the “care of oneself”, a notion related to the government of the self through action, which can transform the experience of the self within the realm of governmentality (Foucault, 1997a: 87-88).
Freedom is exercised through “care of the self” which Foucault defines in terms of knowledge of the self and the capacity to understand the truths through which the self has been constituted (Foucault, 1997a: 282-285). What is achieved through reflective practices of the self is a “conversion” of power that has ethical implications for our relations with others (Foucault, 1997a: 288). This goes back to the notion of
governmentality in its broader context as a way of governing conduct, in the sense that our efforts at self-government will have implications for the way we govern others and thus for the realm of possibility characterized by the freedom of human beings.
There are limits for human freedom embodied within Foucault’s account of power as governmentality in the context that the actualization of freedom depends upon our capacity to resist domination. Foucault makes it clear that states of domination can clearly limit and constrain our practices of freedom and that in these cases liberation is the condition that supports us to actualize our freedom (Foucault, 1997a: 282-283). This goes to the notion that as relations of power have constituted us in historically particular
ways, the forms our freedom can take are limited to those supported by the historical and social framework within which we live. However, the human individual is never a unitary sovereign subject for Foucault, but rather a form of subject, or a variety of forms
corresponding to different relations we have with ourselves (Foucault, 1997a: 290). It is the diversity of the relations we have with ourselves and the different social roles we play that allows for the possibilities of exercising freedom in novel ways.
As I noted earlier, Gordon’s reading of Foucault confirms that while we are necessarily situated within the world and therefore within power relations that shape, limit, constitute and constrain us, human beings are also necessarily free in an ontological sense (Gordon, 1999: 414). According to Gordon, this sense of freedom underpins “the care of the self” which presupposes that freedom is an ontological condition of human existence (Gordon, 1999: 409). Foucault argues that care of the self requires knowing “ontologically what you are” in addition to knowing “what you are capable of” (Foucault, 1997a: 288). This ontological sense of freedom, is what is at stake in Foucault’s argument that “Freedom is the ontological condition for ethics. But ethics is the considered form that freedom takes when it is informed by reflection.” (Foucault, 1997a: 284). Thus it is our ontological freedom that underpins our capacity to practice a reflective form of self- constitution that can place limits on power (Foucault, 1997a: 288).
Freedom is ethical in a special sense for Foucault and this is explained in the context of a way of being and acting in the world. For Foucault, the way that freedom was problematized in Ancient Greek understanding is key to his own account, in the
sense of ethics being an “ethos” that has its source within self-understandings and a way of relating to the self that has public and political implications (Foucault, 1997a: 286). Freedom is a way of being-in-the-world for Foucault, yet in order for one’s ethos to be “good”, “beautiful”, honorable” and “exemplary”, there is a significant degree of effort required in the context of the relationship on oneself to oneself (Foucault, 1997a: 286).
Foucault’s account of freedom, whether in terms of the call to resist domination, or through the practices of freedom that emerge from his account of self-government is ultimately an account of freedom which cannot be understood outside of the social- political domain (Dumm, 1996: 2). Freedom for Foucault is not an escape from everyday politics, nor is it located in a space free from struggles and complex human dilemmas. Dumm (1996: 3) argues that Foucault tries to make the world more livable by situating freedom firmly within political life. Foucault’s characterization of the political realm as a space of relatively stabilized and consolidated “technologies of power” which govern individuals through practices of normalization emphasizes the detrimental outcomes for human action, while also recognizing that increased control means increased
opportunities for resistance (Dolan, 2005: 373). This is the domain of freedom in its political actualization. However, normalizing power targets individuals who are “at liberty” yet whose perspective of reality is open to being shaped through their exposure to disciplinary knowledge (Dolan, 2005: 375).
By situating freedom politically, Foucault not only recovers a notion of freedom that responds to the practical needs of human beings, but he is ultimately supporting what
Dolan refers to as the space of “potential publicness” (Dolan, 2005: 377). Dolan argues that Foucault’s “critical ontology” is committed to freeing a space of the potentially public, a space colonized by biopower and the contestation and resistance that
accompanies it (Dolan, 2005: 377). What Dolan is drawing attention to here is the way in which the relationship between power and freedom ensures that any attempt at
normalization through biopower will be met with contestation and the politicization of life itself (Dolan, 2005: 375).
As ontological freedom is the condition of the existence of power, it is also the condition of the existence of freedom in its actualization within the domain of power relations. Understood this way, freedom retains all the significance accorded to it by Gordon, who recognizes its indispensability to Foucault’s account of subjectivity. Foucault’s insistence on the strategic nature of power emphasizes the complex
relationship between power and freedom, both in terms of power’s strategic mechanisms and the strategies of struggle that are always a possibility within any power relationship (Foucault, 2002: 347).
As Foucault emphasizes, technologies of the self can be constitutive of self- understanding through the efforts of the individual to change the way they relate to themselves (Foucault, 1997a: 225). For Foucault the relationship between subjectivity and truth is not only understandable in terms of the practices of coercion to which we have been subjected, but also in considering the role of practices of self-constitution (Foucault, 1997a: 282). Foucault’s account of power recognizes that subjects are
constituted through power relations and games of truth but also that each individual plays a role in their own constitution through developing different relations of oneself to
oneself in more active ways (Foucault, 1997a: 290). Truth, as a set of rules and principles, belongs to the world and is intricately tied up with power relations that circulate throughout society (Foucault, 1980: 132-133). In actively engaging in games of truth, through caring for the self, one can change the rules and the game of truth and create new strategies for interacting with others (Foucault, 1997a: 290-300).
The complex relationship between freedom and power within Foucault’s account of governmentality emphasizes the importance of relating to ourselves as free in order to fully develop and practice our freedom. In the next chapter I will examine Foucault’s theorization of “the political” as it arises from the relationship between power and freedom that he identifies.