Abstract

This essay is an attempt to deal seriously with the Foucauldian concept of governmentality. Instead of charting its emergence and its uses in Foucault’s disperse texts, the essay contends with governmentality as a concept able to refresh our very understanding of politics. Governmentality is described as the best concept through which to interrupt the “natural” relationship linking modern western States to sovereignty. This is why governmentality is coupled with apparently distant legal and political historically oriented lines of thought. The essay thus proposes a new approach to the history of modern State informed by an enriched concept of governmentality