1 IntroductionIt is without doubt that the ` veritable cottage industry of material'' (Elden, 2007a,page 29) that has developed since the English publication of Foucault's 1978 `govern-mentality' lecture has fashioned an important niche in the social sciences (Foucault,1991c; see for example, Barry et al, 1996; Burchell et al, 1991; Dean, 1994; 2004; Rose,1996; 1999).(1) Under the guise of `governmentality studies', authors have welcomedFoucault's general dismissal of modern political theory and his turn towards thespecific rationalities and technologies of governing, allowing them to see governmentas a practice or ` way of doing things'' (Foucault, 2008, page 318) rather than as theapplication of a political philosophy or ideology. To date, geographers have tended tofollow the contributions of those, such as the sociologist Nikolas Rose (1996; 1998;1999; also Rose and Miller, 1992), who have successfully adapted Foucault's account ofliberal and advanced liberal governmentality into working methodologies for the socialsciences while also injecting a focus into the spatialities of rule which is sometimeslacking (for example, Barnett, 2001; Hannah, 1997; 2000; Huxley, 2007; 2008; Legg,2005; Moon and Brown, 2000; Murdoch and Ward, 1997).(2) Presently, with the fullEnglish publication of Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures at the Colle© ge de France(see Foucault, 2007; 2008)öin which the notion of `political governmentality' (3) isoutlined and developedöan opportunity has arisen for geographers to considerfurther the relationship between space, territory, and governmentality (for example,

How (not) to be governed: Foucault, critique, and the political

Louisa CadmanDepartment of Geographical and Earth Sciences, East Quadrangle, University Avenue,University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland; e-mail: l.cadman@shu.ac.ukReceived 29 April 2009; in revised form 23 October 2009; published online 1 March 2010

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2010, volume 28, pages 539 ^ 556

Abstract. In this paper I offer an interpretation of Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures at the Colle© ge deFrance: Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of Biopolitics. Through doing so, I suspend themainstay of social scientific research that falls within the field of governmentality studies and turninstead to the historico-critical basis for Foucault's researches. Embracing notions of governmental`counter-conducts' and the `critical attitude', I show how a positive desubjugating form of critique,which temporarily suspends the power of governmental norms, is wholly immanent to the formationand development of modern political governmentality. Furthermore, the ethos of this critique is key tounderstanding Foucault's genealogical method and his conception of the political. To advance theseclaims, throughout this paper I draw on the example of rights. I move away from the normativeapproach to rights in an era of (liberal) political governmentality towards a more performativeunderstandingöwhat Foucault terms the `right to question' governmental regimes of truth. I finish bydescribing Foucault's own questioning of governmental regimes and offer a rereading of his defence ofthe Vietnamese boat people in the early 1980s.

doi:10.1068/d4509

(1) This lecture, which was the fourth in Foucault's 1978 annual lecture series at the Colle© ge deFrance (see Foucault, 2007), appeared in the journal Ideology and Consciousness in 1979 and againin The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality in 1991(see Burchell et al, 1991, pages 87 ^ 104).(2) For a comprehensive review see Huxley (2008).(3) By the term political governmentality Foucault is referring to the historical appearance, in the16th century, of the problem of government in the exercise of political sovereignty. He refers to thisas ``the governmentalization of the state'' (Foucault, 2007, page 109).

Elden, 2007a; 2007b) and to contribute to the growing exegesis of the lectures withrespect to Foucault's theoretical and methodological development (see Elden, 2007a;Huxley, 2008; Lemke, 2001; Valverde, 2007). This paper focuses on the latter aspect ofFoucault's researches and, in particular, on the significance of a thus far little discussedpart of the lecture series: the notion of governmental ` counter-conducts'' (Foucault,2007, page 202) and the mode of questioning found therein which concerns how not tobe governed.

Foucault introduces the idea of counter-conduct to denote forms of struggle orrevolt ` against the processes implemented for conducting others'' (Foucault, 2007,page 201). As a relatively new concept in the lexicon of governmentality studies,my focus on counter-conduct is, in some ways, preemptive. It is to counteract thepossibility that, as the term is taken up and developed, it will share the same problem-atic fate as that of Foucauldian ``resistance'' (Foucault, 1998, pages 95 ^ 96) and``subjugated knowledge'' (Foucault, 2003, pages 7 ^ 11) before it. That is, by becomingunderstood as a post hoc reaction or response to governmental `regimes of truth',it will needlessly invite normative criteria as to why the governed can, should, or doresist. In other words, because much of the current literature in the field of govern-mentality studies seeks to outline the regimes of truth through which governorsgovernöa somewhat limited understanding of governmentality, as we will seeöthephenomena of counter-conducts will reignite the question, often aimed at Foucault,of `why fight?' (Campbell, 1998). As I aim to show in this paper, governmentalcounter-conducts are not additional or reactive mechanisms, which we mightembrace, acknowledge, or omit in our analyses of modern political governmentality,but wholly immanent and necessary to the formation and development of govern-mentality. Furthermore, they are key to understanding Foucault's genealogicalmethod and his understanding of the political.

To advance these claims, throughout this paper I draw on the example of (liberal)rights. My use of rights here may seem counterproductive. Do rights not reinforce thequestion of `why fight?' by providing counter-conducts with a universal and neces-sary grounding? Is this not why Foucault himself sought to escape political theory'sfixation with sovereign power and sovereign rights? It is certainly the case thatFoucault (1991a; 1998), in his writings of the early to mid 1970s, sought to overcomethe philosophical preoccupation with the theory of right (understood as the legit-imate use of monarchic, public, or individual powers), and he replaced it with hisstrategical analysis of power-knowledge relations.(4) In fact, he went further than thisand asserted that the advent and persistence of philosophical and juridical rightseffectively masked nonegalitarian disciplinary powers and made them acceptable:infamously writing that ``the `Enlightenment' which discovered the liberties, alsoinvented the disciplines'' (1991a, page 222).(5) Still, in his lectures of 1978 and 1979at the Colle© ge de France, Foucault subjects this negative understanding of juridical

(4) Foucault's reasons for decentring the philosophico-juridical code for understanding power wereas much historical as methodological. In The History of Sexuality: Volume One (1998) he describeshow the juridical code can be dated to the reactivation of Roman law by Western monarchiesin the Middle Ages (see also Foucault, 2003, page 25). Juridical rights were wielded for theiracceptance, and to some extent represented the form of power they exerted, but have since beensucceeded by new powers irreducible to law and sovereignty: disciplinary power and the powerof normalisation.(5) Foucault reiterates this point in the second of his 1976 lectures at the Colle© ge de Francewhen he argues that we are left in a ``sort of bottleneck'' (Foucault, 2003, page 39) or ``blind alley''(Foucault, 1980, page 108) if we seek recourse to the right of sovereignty in order to challengedisciplinary mechanisms.

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rights vis-a© -vis disciplinary powers to autocritique.(6) The twist, perhaps, is that hedoes not reembrace juridical-political rights as such but inserts them into his interestin governmental rationalities and governmental counter-conducts. On the one hand,rather than acting as masks for disciplinary domination, rights are shown to exist withinrelations of power (Ivison, 2008; Patton, 2005)öthey inevitably become an effectivetool for a liberal political apparatus which `governs through freedom' (Rose, 1999). Onthe other hand, an active and performative role for rights is achieved through anotherunderstanding: ` the right to question'' governmental regimes of truth (Foucault, 1997a,page 32, my emphasis). Evident through the actions of counter-conducts, `the right toquestion' prioritises the practice of questioning governments. It does so regardless ofwhether this practice involves a tactical recourse to juridical rights.

With these initial observations in mind, this paper proceeds as follows. I begin, insection 1, by showing how governmentality studies and recent social scientific interestin liberal ` apparatus[es] of security'' have, explicitly or implicitly, taken up the norma-tive understanding of rights to the neglect of the active and performative understanding(Foucault, 2007, page 6). Here I show how the right to question is not simply a formof resistance but part of what enabled political governmentality to become, in the 16thcentury, a problem of and for reasoned thoughtöthat is, a governmentality (see, also,Rose, 1993). To advance this claim, in section 2 I describe how in Security, Territory,Population Foucault draws on what he calls `pastoral counter-conducts' as a means toinstigate his genealogy of modern political governmentality. Here the 16th-centurycrisis of the pastorate (the Reformation and Counter-Reformation) enabled the ques-tion of governmentality, or `how to govern', to transfer from the pastoral into thepolitical domain. I explore the form of this questioning by drawing on what Foucaultterms ``governmentalization'' (1997a, page 28) and connect this with his understandingof `problematisation'. The notion of problematisation introduces the idea that, duringthe 16th century, political governmentality became a problem that both affectedand positioned governors and governed. Towards the end of this paper, in section 4,I explain how the problematisation of political governmentality occurs at the inter-face of governing others (the conduct of other's conduct) and governing the self(self-conduction); political governmentality is not something that is simply imposedby governors on the governed. Before doing so, in section 3, I draw on what Foucaultin a lecture delivered in the same year as Security, Territory, Population calls the ` criticalattitude'' (1997a, page 25). This is a historical-philosophical term that elaborates onthe importance of governmental counter-conducts and their mode of questioning(in the form of the right to question) for both Foucault's genealogical method andhis understanding of the political. I describe how the right to question does not reston the innate faculties of the governed subject but is, by its very action, radicallydesubjugating: it is what enables a governed subject to experience, and possiblytransfigure, a given field of power-knowledge relations. In section 4, I proceed toexplain how the critical attitude has been pacified by and absorbed into contem-porary accounts of (neo)liberal governmentality. I rectify the limitations of theseapproaches by outlining Foucault's own account. Here I detail how the right toquestion plays out in practice by drawing on what Foucault terms ` games of truth''

(6) It is important to add here that, prior to the publication of his 1978 and 1979 lectures, Foucault'sintimation of a negative relationship between outmoded juridical rights and burgeoning discipli-nary powers sustained critique from social scientists. Firstly, for oversimplifying theoreticalunderstandings of sovereignty and the balance of powers (such as that of Hobbes; see Hindess,1996; Ivison, 1998). Secondly, as inadvertently adopting a Marxist analytic that conceives recourseto (liberal) rights as simply masking unequal power relations (Dean, 1994; Driver, 1985; Rose andValverde, 1998).

How (not) to be governed: Foucault, critique, and the political 541

(1997b, page 281). Games of truth complement governmental regimes of truth byshowing that, whilst the latter have historically contingent `rules' and subject positions,they are nonetheless historical practices, or games, which are open ended (Tully, 1999).Finally, in section 5, I demonstrate how my preceding analysis explains Foucault's ownquestioning of governmental truth regimes. The example I use is a statement written byFoucault in response to the plight of the Vietnamese boat people in the late 1970s.

2 Liberal governmentality, apparatuses of security, and rights claimsIn Security, Territory, Population Foucault begins his autocritique of the assumed roleof liberal rights vis-a© -vis disciplinary powers early on, ending his second lecture of 1978as follows:

` I said somewhere that we could not understand the establishment of liberal ideol-ogies and a liberal politics in the eighteenth century without keeping in mind thatthe same eighteenth century, which made such a strong demand for freedoms, hadall the same ballasted these freedoms with a disciplinary technique that ... consid-erably restricted freedom and provided, as it were, guarantees for the exercise ofthis freedom.Well, I think I was wrong. I was not completely wrong, of course, but,in short, it was not exactly this. [Instead] this freedom, both ideology and techniqueof government, should in fact be understood within the mutations and transforma-tions of technologies of power. More precisely and particularly, freedom is nothingbut the correlative of the deployment of apparatuses of security ... the possibility ofmovement, change of place, and processes of circulation of both people and things''(2007, page 48, my emphasis).

Foucault's notion of apparatuses of security, and their correlate freedom, can be under-stood in two ways. Firstly, by letting things take their `natural' course, apparatuses ofsecurity seek to guide probable events (utilising techniques of statistical forecasting andeconomic costing, for example), finding supports within processes themselves ratherthan seeking to absorb them into legal punishments or disciplinary prescriptions. Thisunderstanding of security resembles descriptions of postdisciplinary `societies of con-trol' (Deleuze, 1992; Hannah, 1997) that work through information codes and flows(Dodge and Kitchin, 2005) and the complexity sciences (Dillon and Reid, 2001). It hasalso been applied to address the strategic logics of the War on Terror (Anderson, 2007;Dillon and Reid, 2001; Massumi, 2005). Secondly, security's correlate `freedom' isindicative of Foucault's later focus on liberal and neoliberal rationalities of governing(found in his 1979 lectures at the Colle© ge de France). Here liberal governmentality seeksto promote and secure the independence or freedom of self-regulating domains, suchas civil society' or `the economy' (in liberalism), and the enterprise' or `entrepreneurialself ' (in neoliberalism) [see Rose's (1999, pages 61 ^ 97) understanding of `governingthrough freedom'].

Although largely implicit, the role rights play within these formations is twofold.Firstly, in the case of apparatus of security, particularly in current work on the Waron Terror, rights become co-opted and consumed into security's logic, such as whenthe security problematic incorporates a right to defend against immanent threats to`liberal peace' (Braun, 2007). Secondly, in the case of `governing through freedom',rights are considered an effective tool to dispense and regulate liberalism's rationalitythat ``one always governs too much'' (Foucault, 2008, page 319). It is this rationality,rather than rights per se, that constructs the freedom of the governed to participatein parliamentary systems:

`Rather than saying that the governed should be the source of sovereignty becauseof their intrinsic rights and liberties as individuals or as members of a politicalcommunity, [Foucault] is suggesting that for liberalism the governed ought to

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participate in the election of governors because government already depends on theliberties and capacities of the governed exercised within an economy'' (Dean, 1999,page 173 ^ 174; see also Foucault, 2008, page 321).

In both cases rights are seen as secondary, but nonetheless effective, tools that supportand enhance (neo)liberal rationalities of governing. In this sense, the relationship rightshave to (neo)liberal governmentality is similar to the relationship laws have to bio-political norms (see Foucault, 1998): rights are conduits of power relations rather thanfoundational for them (Ivison, 2008).

What is largely neglected within both of these aforementioned accounts is thefunctioning of rights amidst forms of governmental contestation [for an importantexception see Patton (2005)]. In relation to apparatuses of security, contestation doesnot arise as such because preemption, as a strategic governmental logic, does notmerely anticipate but in fact incites, on its own terms, all counterstrategies. In relationto (neo)liberal governmentality, although security and freedom are positioned in theiroriginal context, the rights of those who are governed tend to become absorbed a prioriinto liberalism's rationality that one always governs too much. In both cases, recourseto rights, as such, rarely allows something new to happen. Although Foucault'saccount of political governmentality is able to support these readings, they offer us,I suggest, only half the story. In lectures delivered around the same time as Security,Territory, Population, Foucault presents another sort of right, one which, while lessexplicit in his 1978 and 1979 lecture courses at the Colle© ge de France, is whollycontemporaneous to political governmentality's formation and development. As I willexplain later in section 3, Foucault considers this active and performative right as` the right to question'' governmental regimes of truth (Foucault, 1997a, page 32; seealso Foucault, 1988a, pages 51 ^ 52). Before this, I want to show how the genealogyof the right to question is found in Security, Territory, Population through the notion ofpastoral counter-conducts.

3 Pastoral counter-conductsIn Security, Territory, Population, after outlining the apparatuses of security thatemerged in the 18th century, Foucault turns his attention to the much earlier formationof pastoral power and pastoral counter-conducts. Indeed, much of Security, Territory,Population is given over to outlining pastoral power and raison d'etatöthe individual-ising and totalising `roots' of modern political governmentality (see also Foucault, 2002,pages 298 ^ 325).

I cannot give a full description of Foucault's explorations into the Christian pastoralhere, suffice to say that it forms part of the prelude to the 16th-century explosion of thearts of government'.(7) Foucault describes how an intensification and subsequent trans-lation of pastoral poweröby which the pastoral `government of souls' gradually acquireda political meaningöemerged, in part from a series of pastoral counter-conducts (culmi-nating in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation). These counter-conducts were not anegation of or reaction to the pastoral conduct of conduct. Instead, they were activemovements ` whose objective [was] a different form of conduct, that is to say: want-ing to be conducted differently, by other leaders (conducteurs) and other shepherds,

(7) Pastoral power is a different form of power than that exercised over legal subjects in territorialspace (see, also, Foucault, 2002b, pages 298 ^ 325). Foucault finds its descent in Hebrew, rather thanGreek, thought: ` in contrast with the power exercised on the unity of a territory, pastoral power isexercised on a multiplicity on the move'' (2007, page 126). Still, it was only in Christian societiesthat ` claims to govern men [sic] in their daily life'' (2007, page 149) flourished. Foucault, in theselectures, is sketching only the beginning of what will become an extended study into the history ofChristian asceticism (see Foucault, 1988b; 1997b, pages 81 ^ 85).

How (not) to be governed: Foucault, critique, and the political 543

towards other objectives and forms of salvation, and through other procedures andmethods'' (Foucault, 2007, pages 194 ^ 195).(8) Describing neither a causal nor succes-sional process, Foucault seeks to show that the broad transition from an economy ofsouls' (Christian pastoralism) to the `government of men' (political governmentality)emerged through the general crisis of pastoral conduct, one that enabled a series ofeconomic and political crises (such as rural and urban revolt) to be translatedinto religious concerns. Subsequently, a problematisation formed that concernedthe extent to which the sovereign or political domain should take on the task of` conducting souls'' (Foucault, 2007, page 231).While we might be cautious in elicitinga Foucauldian methodology from this, it is instructive to outline the moves Foucaultmakes here. Firstly, he acknowledges a crisisöwhat he later terms a ``cris[i]s ofgovernmentality'' (Foucault, 2008, page 68)öwhich is part cause and part effect of aseries of strategic counter-conducts. Secondly, this crisis opens onto the problematisationof political governmentalityö` how the problem of government, of governmentality,was able to arise on the basis of the pastorate'' (Foucault, 2007, page 193)öwhichcan be understood as an original response to the crisis, inasmuch that there is not asimple transition from the pastor to the sovereign but the emergence of a new problem-atic domain that concerns `the state' and its corresponding `art of government'.(9)

Thirdly and finally, he goes on to outline a relatively settled governmentality, that ofthe form this problematisation takes (in this instance, raison d'etat). This domain isnonetheless traversed by facets of the former pastoral counter-conducts, exemplifiedby contemporary struggles against the ` submission of subjectivity'' (Foucault, 2002,page 332). This is unsurprising as pastoral power makes up political governmentality'shistorical genealogy.

Whilst the concept of problematisation took a further few years to be developed(see Foucault, 1992; 1997b, pages 117 ^ 118), its methodological implications are evidentin Foucault's opening lecture to The Birth of Biopolitics in 1979. In outlining whathe means by governmentality, Foucault stresses that his focus is not simply on therationalities and techniques of political government but specifically on the art ofpolitical government (see also Osborne, 1998). That is, he seeks to understand ` the levelof reflection in the practice of government and, at the same time, reflection on thebest possible way of governing'' (Foucault, 2008, page 2). What Foucault is alluding tohere is that, since the 16th century, political governmentality in the West has becomeboth a thought-imbued practice (incorporating its rationalities and techniques) anda problem about which, and on the basis of these practices, we are entitled tothink: ``how to be governed, by whom, to what extent, to what ends, and by whatmethods'' (Foucault, 2007, page 89). The term ` governmentalization'' (Foucault, 1997a,page 28)öone which shares an affinity with Foucault's use of the term `problematisa-tion'öis useful here as it implies both of these processes. Foucault then does not seekto reflect on the ways that political governors actually governed; nor does he seek todisclose what gives governmental practices meaning or cause for concern (in thegoverned subjects that experience them, for example). Either task would premiseuniversals that are filtered through the lens of historyöthe state, sovereignty, or civilsociety in the former, human nature or human freedom in the latter. Rather, his

(8) Here Foucault shifts his earlier strategical understanding of the ``tactical polyvalence ofdiscourses'' (Foucault, 1998, page 100) onto governmental rationalities, inasmuch that pastoralcounter-conducts partly corresponded to the same tactical elements that were put to work, albeit onthe fringes, of pastoral power. Foucault gives us five main themes: escatology, scripture, mysticism,communities, and asceticism (2007, pages 191 ^ 226).(9) The state was not somehow born here but becomes an object of thought that enters intoreflected governmental practice.

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foremost interest is in the processes that allow certain thingsö``state and society,sovereign and subjects'' (Foucault, 2007, page 3)öto become objects of thought thatcan be interrogated, or reflected upon, as problems. This has important implicationsfor our approaches to governmentality, in that, while we are most certainly governedöas individuals, as political citizens, or as economic subjects, for exampleöto beginour analyses with ` a body called the governed, in relation to which a body of governorsproceeds to act'' (Veyne, 1998, page 150) is a relatively meaningless exercise. For Foucault,both the definitions and the respective positions of governors and governed are notdefinitive prior to the process of problematisation ^ governmentalisation. Problematicalso is the presumption that the governed subsist and are ruled within nation-states.Instead this is how governmentality became problematised in the 16th and 17th centuries.Here, political governmentality (in the form of raison d'etat) occurred at the inter-section of the Reformation (via pastoral counter-conducts) and the spatial developmentof administrative monarchies.(10) It meant that the sovereign, who rules over territorybut does not govern, had to confront questions concerning the art of governing `menand things'.

4 The critical attitude and the right to questionIn a lecture delivered later in the same year as Security, Territory, Population, Foucaultabsorbs pastoral counter-conduct into a more general cultural form, what he now callsthe critical attitude' (1997a, pages 23 ^ 82). Whereas the term counter-conduct intro-duced the idea that political governmentality became a problem of and for reasonedthought, the critical attitude expands on a positive form of critical ethical reflectionfound therein. Indeed, to simply say that from the 16th century onwards politicalgovernmentality becomes problematised does not, in itself, guarantee against the devel-opment of sedimented practices and ways of thinking. It merely introduces the notionthat ` the reasoned way of governing best'' emerges through a process of problematisa-tion (Foucault, 2008, page 2). As I seek to show in the following, by focusing on thecritical attitude found in pastoral counter-conducts, Foucault is able to express fidelityto an ethos that not only complements his genealogical method but also provides itwith its critical edge.

As authors have emphasised elsewhere (Cadman, 2009; Elden, 2002; 2007a),Foucault, in his lectures on biopolitics and governmentality (2003; 2007; 2008), revisitsthe historical epistemes outlined in The Order of Things. To simplify these somewhat,he shows how the sovereign of the Middle Ages governed according to a continuumof divine providence (as God's representative on Earth). Here questions concerning theart of government could not arise. Raison d'Eè tat, in line with the classical episteme,developed the notion of an art of government premised on the state. Lastly, modernliberal governmentality governs through civil society' and according to a necessary(Kantian) self-limitation. In these accounts Foucault is concerned with the archaeologicallevel of governmentalisation, that of diagnosing the rules of formation of longstandinggovernmental problematisations (bearing in mind that such rules are not premised onuniversals). What he importantly highlights in his lecture ` What is Critique?'' (1997a,pages 23 ^ 82) and in a later essay ` What is Enlightenment?'' (1997a, pages 101 ^ 134)is the genealogical aspect of his researches into political governmentality. To do thishe reengages with The Order of Things and outlines a slippage between ImmanuelKant's analytical enterprise (exemplified in The Order of Things by the modern `ana-lytic of finitude') and Kant's journalistic reflection on the process of Enlightenment.(10)While Foucault ties sovereignty with territory, others have argued that calculable space formspart of the problematisation of political governmentality (see Braun, 2000; Elden, 2007b; Hannah,2000; Rose-Redwood, 2006).

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The former seeks to outline the universal rules and necessary limits that governknowledge, and the latter is the acknowledgement by Kant that adopting these princi-ples requires an act of courage, a decision taken by certain individuals to releasethemselves from their ` self imposed tutelage'' (Kant, 1997, page 16): that is, from theiruncritical obedience to authority. For Kant, Enlightenment is both a process and atask: a telos and an ethos.

Foucault considers Kant's journalistic and ethical reflection on the process ofEnlightenment as exemplary of the critical attitude not to be governed, one which, ineffect, is the condition of possibility for Kant's analytical enterprise. In doing so, ratherthan adopt a post-Kantian analytical path thatöpremising itself on the necessary anduniversal limits of knowledgeöquestions the legitimacy, and critiques the excesses, offorms of governmentality, Foucault suggests that we might instead begin with ` th[e][ethical] decision not to be governed'' (1997a, page 60) found in Kant's reflection onthe Enlightenment.(11) This allows us to conceive the conditions of acceptability of agovernmental systemönot in general or universal terms but through the process ofcrisis, strategical analysis, and problematisationöand, as genealogists, consider itspossible reversal (Foucault, 1997a). To do this, Foucault works in two alternativeways. Firstly, as we have seen, by beginning his analysis of political governmentality(in the form of raison d'etat) with a discussion of pastoral counter-conducts, Foucaultshows us that there was nothing necessary or inherent to its development in the 16thcentury. Secondly, and retrospectively, by engaging with a current crisis of governmen-tality (such as that of welfare liberalism at the time Foucault was writing), and itscurrent problematisation (through neoliberalism), Foucault is enabled entry into hishistorical investigations. In the case of the crisis of liberalism, for example, Foucault'sintention is to ` find in the history of the nineteenth century some of the elements whichenable us to clarify the way in which the crisis of the apparatus of [liberal] govern-mentality is currently experienced, lived, practiced and formulated'' (Foucault, 2008,page 70).(12) Rather than concern himself with outlining a ground for resisting moderngovernmentalities, Foucault argues that by remaining faithful to the critical attitudehe is able to gain access to the formation, and possible disruption, of historical singu-larities (such as raison d'etat or liberal governmentality), singularities that cannot bepremised on any causal a priori or subjected to universal critique.(13)

Foucault does not simply seek to remain historically faithful to the critical attitude inorder to enter into his political genealogies but also seeks to endorse the disorientatingtemporal logic of critique found therein. The full definition of the critical attitude isthe movement through ` which the subject gives [it]self the right to question truth on itseffects of power and question power on its discourses of truth'' (Foucault, 1997a, page 32).Whilst it appears that there must be some grounding for this gesture (as an innate

(11) Foucault hesitates to use the word decision and, in the questions following the lecture, partlyrejects the terminology: ``when ... I was saying `decision making will not to be governed,' then therewas an error on my part ... I was not referring to something that would be a fundamentalanarchism, that would be like an originary freedom ... . I did not say it but that does not meanthat I absolutely exclude it'' (1997a, page 73). The `decision not to be governed' no doubt rests onan undecidable freedom. For links with Derrida in this respect, see Chryssostalis (2005), Keenan(1987), and Pavlich (2005).(12) Foucault's (2008) account of neo-liberalism is configured precisely on how its proponentsproblematise facets of 19th-century liberalism, for example, in the arena of law (page 250) andeconomic monopolies (pages 134 ^ 137).(13) Foucault calls this aspect of genealogy ` eventualisation'': ``It means making visible a singularityin places where there is a temptation to invoke a historical constant, an immediate anthropologicaltrait, or an obviousness which imposes itself uniformly on all. To show that things `weren't asnecessary as all that' '' (1991b, page 76, original emphasis).

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faculty of the subject, for example), for a subject to give itself a right to questionpower ^ knowledge relations is normatively and temporally difficult. It presupposesa subject who questions, but it also supposes that the subject is simultaneouslydesubjugated through the very act of questioning. In simple terms, to bring forth andquestion a field of subjection means that the subject cannot be quite what it was before.Furthermore, and following my earlier account of the normative role of rights, ifpower-knowledge systems are constitutive of discourses of right, rather than vice versa,then the subject who enunciates this right (the right to question) cannot be normativelysupported by the present epistemic framework. The right to question is not, indeedcannot be, the positing of universals (`who I am'); it is instead to risk oneself in thepresent [``what therefore, am I?'' (Foucault cited in Butler, 2002, page 221)], by bringingthe present regime of truth, or governmentality, into relief or question (I will return tothis, in relation to `games of truth', in part 5).

The right to question is a non-foundational right which complements Foucault'sunderstanding of the political. In notes accompanying his 1978 and 1979 lectures,Foucault states that he does not follow the notion that everything is political (or thatthe State is everywhere), nor does he believe that the political is a fundamentalantagonism (ie Carl Schmidt). Instead, he writes: ` politics is no more or less thanthat which is born with resistance to governmentality, the first uprising, the firstconfrontation'' (Foucault, 2007, page 390). Note here that politics is born with resist-ance; it is not resistance, or that which passes for resistance, per se. Foucault here ispointing to the contingent yet desubjugating experience of the right not to be governed` like that, by that, in the name of those principles, [and] with such and such anobjective in mind'' (Foucault, 1997a, page 28, original emphasis). The potential ofthis experience spans his books and interviews. In these, rather than begin with asubject positionöMarxist, liberal, or radicalöor a `we' that questions the politicalpresent through judgement, Foucault seeks instead to make the ` future formation of`we' possible'' (Foucault, 1997b, page 114) by elaborating on the questions currentcounter-conducts (surrounding psychiatry and sexuality, for example) are posing topolitics. Foucault both belongs to and questions his own actuality in that he engageswith a current crisis of governmentality and seeks to `free up', through his historicalinvestigations, the ways this crisis can be problematised by those engaging with it(Foucault, 1997b; see also Rabinow, 2003). This is why he calls his books `fictions' orexperience books': counter-conducts question the(ir) present, and Foucault's purposeof genealogy is to engage and open up this questioning.

5 The critical attitude and (neo)liberal governmentalityWhat is interesting about Foucault's account of liberal governmentality is that, unlikeits predecessor raison d'etat, it becomes, at an archaeological level, the political equiva-lent of Kantian critique: it questions its own internal limits as to its power to know(Gordon, 2002).(14) That is, whereas the critical attitude that arose in contestation withraison d'etat was both legal and extrinsicöseeking to limit the administrative powersof the sovereign by defining the basic rights of citizens (15)öliberalism's form of critiquebecomes an intrinsic one that seeks to decide between ``the agenda and non-agenda

(14) Foucault writes: ` Kant ... had to tell man that he cannot know the totality of the world. Well,some decades earlier, political economy had told the sovereign: Not even you can know the totalityof the economic process. There is no sovereign in economics'' (2008, page 283).(15) Recourse to juridical rights here proved an effective tactical expression for the critical attitude,but to reiterate my earlier points, they must not be misunderstood as its foundation. Instead,drawing on his strategical analysis, Foucault (1998; 2008) shows how juridical mechanisms set upby administrative monarchies were subsequently used against the monarchies themselves.

How (not) to be governed: Foucault, critique, and the political 547

[of government], between what to do and what not to do'' (Foucault, 2008, page 12). This iswhy liberalism is the full art of governmentalisation, understood as an autonomousrationality (from sovereignty) and perpetual problematisation: must one govern?Do we govern too much? What is effective government? A productive inquiry intothe relationship between the critical attitude and liberal governmentality might thenask the following: Does liberal governmentality stifle the critical attitude by absorbingit a priori into its own rationality (by which it is no longer an attitude but a failedpromise to respect the citizen as an autonomous capacitous subject by governing heror his freedom), or does it, instead, constitute a political flourishing of it (throughgovernment's awareness of the critical capacities of the governed)? In effect, this playswith the slippage Foucault himself instigates between his historicisation of Kant'sanalytical critique on the governmental field and critique understood as a (modern)attitude or ethos that is effectively invoked each time we, or a political movement,question the present. As we have seen, much of the governmentality literature implic-itly follows the former route by diagnosing a `genealogy of freedom' internal to liberalgovernmentality (Rose, 1999). In geography this has been taken to mean that thosespaces, in which we consider ourselves most free, are an effective artefact of govern-ment (Barnett, 2001; Bondi, 2005; Clarke et al, 2004). Authors, such as Hindess (1997),have pointed to the limitations of these approaches by emphasising the importance ofpolitically orientated action (qua Weber), such as dissent and faction, which mustcoexist with the politics of liberal governmentalities. Still, in emphasising the internaltechniques that governments use to manage the governed as political actors (politicalparties, elections, and the free press, for example), Hindess too closes the space ofpolitical critique in advance. Indeed, he positions Foucault's account of liberalismclose to Nietzsche: ` there is nothing more thoroughly harmful to freedom than liberalinstitutions'' (Nietzsche, cited in Hindess, 1997, page 267).

In some ways, the question concerning liberal governmentality and the status of thecritical attitude is exacerbated in contemporary accounts of neoliberal governmentalityand apparatuses of security. Here, as we have seen, critique is not only immanent togovernment's existence (Do we govern too much?) butöas the event of innovation,change, or disruptionöis also part of its ongoing action. Hence, in relation to appa-ratuses of security: how, through anticipatory knowledges and practices, might wegovern the probability of dangerous events? Or, in relation to neoliberalism: how canwe govern (the market) in order to allow (market) competition to thrive? One concernhere, however, is that these studies tend to remain focused on, or adapt, Foucault'sunderstanding of governmentality as the conduct of others' conduct (emanating fromgovernments). They neglect that Foucault's equivocal usage of the term conduct'means that it incorporates both conducting others (via governmental technologies)and conducting the self (via the ethical relation of the governed subject to its ownconduction).

Foucault (2008) himself seems aware of the potential impasse found in his accountof liberal governmentality and, as such, seeks to emphasise that its internal critique(as the decision between what must be done and what it is advisable not to do) arisesnot simply through an internal rationality emanating from governments but throughthe constitution of, and `action between', governors and governed:

` [I]t is not those who govern who, in complete sovereignty and full reason, willdecide on this internal limitation. Inasmuch as the government of men [sic] is apractice which is not imposed by those who govern on those who are governed,but a practice that fixes the definition and respective positions of the governed andgovernors facing each other and in relation to each other, `internal regulation'means that this limitation is not exactly imposed by either one side or the other,

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or at any rate not globally, definitively, and totally, but by, I would say, transaction,in the very broad sense of the word, that is to say, `action between,' that is to say,by a series of conflicts, agreements, discussions, and reciprocal concessions: allepisodes whose effect is finally to establish a de facto, general, rational divisionbetween what is to be done and what is not to be done in the practice of governing''(Foucault, 2008, page 12).

The internal critique of liberal governmentality, which premises the market as its site oftruth, does not mean simply that an economic theory or ideology is imposed bygovernors on the governed (or, indeed, vice versa). Rather, liberalism's internal limi-tation emerges through a process of transaction that, in effect, realigns the positions ofboth. In his 1978 and 1979 lectures, Foucault is not interested in the political spacesavailable for or created by these contestations and conflicts, instead he is interested inthe ` transactional realities'' (2008, page 297) that become problematised through them.Transactional realities, such as sexuality, madness, or civil society (all Foucault'sexamples) subsist at the interface of governors and governed.(16) They support thegovernmental technologies that direct the conduct of the governed, who in turnconduct themselves accordingly. Indeed, it is only when there is a disjuncture betweenthe field of conduction and the relationship the individual has to herself or himselfas conducted subject that counter-conducts develop and transactional realities areformed or reproblematised. This is why, as Veyne (2005) suggests, there is a questionof subjectivity in politics, subjectivity here referring to ``the way in which the subjectexperiences himself [sic] in a game of truth'' (Foucault, 2000, page 461).

Transactional realities are not merely objects of thought that pass betweengovernors and governed. They are better understood as the problematised field ofreference, or contact point, between modes of objectivation [the (modern) individualas it is objectified as a governable subject who lives, works and speaks] and modes ofsubjectivation [the (ethical) self-conduction of the governed subject] (Foucault, 2000,pages 459 ^ 463). Together, these form political governmentalities' ``regimes of truth''(Foucault, 1980, page 131). Take the transactional reality of sexuality, for example.To objectify and govern individuals through disciplinary and confessional apparatusesrequires a certain modality, or mode of subjectivation, of the subject. In this case,the subject must reflect upon, and seek to know, the (desiring) self [Han (2005); I willreturn to this example in the conclusion].

While Foucault does not elaborate on the terms, the process of `transaction' and`action between' implies that, during governmental contestations or counter-conducts,neither governors nor governed act directly on each other; instead, they act on thetransactional field or domain through which they are engaged. By acting on this field,they also act on their respective positioning as governors or governed. Indeed, it maywell be that in some instances both `governors' and `governed' become subjected to thesame mode of objectification and subjectification of their conduct. The problematisedspace of neoliberalism, for example, addresses both the conduct of governments andthe conduct of individuals through an enterprise form' (Burchell, 1993; Foucault, 2008;Rose, 1998).

(16) In relation to the development of liberal governmentality, Foucault focuses on the transactionalreality of ` civil society'' (2008, page 297), which becomes a problematisation at the end of the 18thcentury. As a response to the crisis of raison d'etat, civil society is neither a construct of liberalgovernments (which would make no sense to the governed) nor a universal given (even if it becomesarticulated as such). Instead, it emerges as a problematisation that effectively enables the emergingknowledges of homo economicus ( economic man')öwhich question and effectively escape thesovereign or administrative stateöto coexist with a juridical subject subsisting within a territory.

How (not) to be governed: Foucault, critique, and the political 549

Transactional realities provide the opening that makes subjectivity possible; theyenable the governmental technologies that shape and direct the way individualsconduct themselves (Foucault, 2000). As a condition of existence for the governed,those who engage in counter-conducts have no recourse to an eschatological or orig-inal freedom but rather to a modification in the ` game'' through which the truth(of the governed subject) is produced (Foucault, 1997b, page 281; Tully, 1999). As Tullyexplains:

` [A]ny game will involve, first, the analysis of the rules in accordance with which thegame is routinely played and the techniques of government or relations of powerthat hold them in place [ie modes of objectification and modes of subjectification].Second, it will involve the `strategies of freedom' in which some participants refuseto be governed in this way, dispute and seek to modify the rules, and thus thinkand act differently to some extent [ie governmental counter conducts]'' (Tully, 1999,page 167, my emphasis).

This furthers Foucault's understanding of the critical attitude ` as the movement bywhich the subject gives [it]self the right to question'' (1997a, page 32, my emphasis).Counter-conducts, through their very action, bring into relief the regime of truththrough which they are known and acted upon. Concurrently, by problematising theconduct of their conduct, they also problematise their subjective ` identities as players''(Tully, 1999, page 168; see also Butler, 2002).

Whilst it could be said that games of truth permeate all relations of governmental-ity, the actions of counter-conducts are `qualitatively' different from the actions of thosewho simply seek to influence governments or question the efficiency or accuracy offorms of governing (qua liberalism). Counter-conducts practice freedomöthe freedomto think (and act) otherwise (Foucault, 1988b, page 330)öby bringing forth and ques-tioning the regime of truth through which they are engaged as objects and subjects ofgovernment. They are risky and transfigurative because, by questioning the conductof their conduct, they simultaneously question the relationship of the self to itself,risking the self in the process (for a similar point, see Butler, 2002). It is for this reasonthat Foucault questions contemporary sexual liberation movementsönot because itis radical, anarchic, or transgressive to berate what seemingly falls under the guise ofidentity politics but because discourses of personal liberation are in fact premised onindividualised modes of subjectivation (or subjection), which are born from pastoralbiopower.(17) Foucault's overall concern then is with governmental regimes of truthwhich have become fixed or blocked to such an extent that there can be no strategicmovement or game playing at the level of ethics and subjectivation (Foucault, 1982).

Foucault's understanding of games of truth and practices of freedom explains hisown response to the relationship between the critical attitude and liberal governmen-tality. He writes of the current ` paradox of relations of capacity and power'' (1997a,page 128), which is to say that, whilst governmental technologies have taken on thetask of ` maximising our capacities for free action, ... we are simultaneously governedthrough [this] very freedom'' (Valverde, 1999, page 666; see also Rose, 1996; 1999).Still, he goes on to ask: ` how can the growth of capabilities be disconnected fromthe intensification of power relations'' (Foucault, 1997a, page 129). Although it appearsthat Foucault is merely critiquing the form of freedom akin to liberal governmen-tality, he is instead critiquing liberalism if it seeks to fix freedom at certain frontiers

(17) This is not to say that what we might call `liberation struggles' are not important. Foucault givesa place for resistance as ` no saying'' where ``one must be content with reacting ... after the event''(2002, page 347). Here he is implying that in certain contexts (such as colonisation), where gamesof truth are fixed or even expelled, liberation movements provide an important premise forpractices of freedom. Still, they do not, in and of themselves, guarantee them.

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(Foucault, 1988a). Freedom, for Foucault, is a practice; it certainly isn't guaranteed,but neither is it necessarily stifled by liberal governmentality.

6 Foucault's rightIn this final section I want to shed some empirical light on the understanding ofcounter-conduct and the right to question that I have outlined in this paper. To dothis, I want to draw on Foucault's own questioning of governmental regimes of truth.During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Foucault was involved in campaigning for thosewho had fled the communist regime in Vietnam but who had not yet been receivedas refugees in Western countries (Campbell, 1998; Keenan, 1987). In 1981, along withtwo international humanitarian organisations (Medecins du Monde and Terre desHommes), he attended a press conference at the Geneva Intercontinental Hotel underthe banner of Comite International Contre le Piraterie (CICP). The purpose of thisconference was to campaign for those Vietnamese boat people who were beingattacked, raped, tortured, and murdered by pirates in the Gulf of Thailand. Foucaulttook some time to write a defence of his and the CICP's action. This was published,after his death, in Liberation (30 June ^ 1 July 1984) under the title ` Faux au gouverne-ments, les droits de l'Homme''.(18) It is certainly interesting that this short statement,which Foucault did not intend to be published, has received such a high level ofengagement (for example, Campbell, 1998; Gordon, 2002; Keenan, 1987; Patton, 2005).This is arguably because what at first appears as a contradiction to Foucault's anti-foundationalism in fact provides a telling response to those who feel that, withoutsuch foundations, Foucault cannot justify his own recourse to rights. Foucault beginsby outlining an international citizenry ` with no other grounds for speaking, orfor speaking together, than a shared difficulty in enduring what is taking place. ...Who appointed us, then? No one. And that is precisely what constitutes our right''(Foucault, 2002, page 474). Here human rights are not grounded on metaphysicalvalues but initiated solely on the grounds of a right to initiate where there is no one.

Authors have read Foucault's statement as one that works with an undecidabilitybetween the constative and performative aspect of rights [Keenan (1987); and onDerrida and rights generally, see Honig (1991)], inasmuch as Foucault is at once claim-ing a right (without any grounding in the present) yet simultaneously affirming a (notyet) new right (Keenan, 1987). In light of my previous discussion, we might reframeFoucault's declaration accordingly. Firstly, Foucault and the CICP are members of thecommunity of the governed' whose obligation to speak here is, of course, one ofcontingency by nature of being governedöeven as we struggle with governments(Campbell, 1998)öbut also one of responsibility that hinges not primarily or only onthis fact but also on the fact that to be governed well means to engage in a dialogue,or game, with governors (even, or especially, if that dialogue entails some risk).(19)

The ground for speaking here is that of a disjuncture (a `shared difficulty' or a crisis')between how the CICP consider themselves as governed subjects (ethics) and the actionsof governments (politics).

(18) An English version of the statement can be found in Foucault 2002 (pages 474 ^ 475) entitled,` Confronting Governments: Human Rights''.(19) In other interviews around this time, Foucault elaborates on the importance of questioninggovernments (with or without an alternative programme). He states: ` we are all governed'' and` we can demand of those who govern us a certain truth as to their ultimate aims, the generalchoices of their tactics, and a number of particular points in their programmes: this is the parrhesia(free speech) of the governed, who can and must question those who govern them, in the name ofthe knowledge, the experience they have, by virtue of being citizens, of what those who govern do,of the meaning of their action, of the decisions they have taken'' (1988b, pages 51 ^ 52).

How (not) to be governed: Foucault, critique, and the political 551

Secondly, this questioning seeks to publicise the situation of those who are notgoverned fairly or who, in this case, are not governed at all (Patton, 2005). In a sense,Foucault here is giving his own response to those who are exempt not from liberalrationalities or rights but from the right to question governments or, in the case ofrefugees, from the ` right to have rights'' (Arendt, 1976, page 296). That is, those who inour contemporary forms of governmentality ``are deprived, not of the right to [liberal]freedom, but of the right to action'' (Arendt, 1976, page 296). This has importantimplications for governmentality studies because, whilst numerous authors have soughtto show how certain groups and individuals are deemed unable or unwilling to partakein liberal freedom,(20) Foucault is concerned here with those who are excepted frompartaking in agonistic games of truth between governors and governed: he is focusingon freedom as a practice rather than as a governmental rationality (Cadman, 2009;Edkins and Pin-Fat, 2005; Tully, 2003).

Thirdly, as contemporary governments pride themselves on being concerned withthe welfare of the governedöa situation that, following my earlier account of trans-actional realities, the governed may largely acceptöit is not satisfactory that thesuffering of the (un)governed be deemed collateral damage' (` [t]he suffering of men[sic] must never be a silent residue of policy'') (Foucault, 2002, page 475; see alsoOsborne, 1999; Tully, 2003). Instead, governments must be made accountable. This,as Philo (2006) has argued, means that the governed mayöindeed shouldöstrategi-cally use governmental technologies, which are supported by transactional realities(in this case pastoral care'), against governments themselves.

Finally, those who are governed, and who are free to act, not only have the right toquestion the actions of government but can also intervene when governments them-selves fail to act. In Foucault's example this is through the formation of independentinternational humanitarian groups (which is not to say that these interventions will notbecome co-opted by governments). Foucault continues his statement: `Amnesty Inter-national, Terre des Hommes, and Medecins du Monde are initiatives that have createdthis new rightöthat of private individuals to effectively intervene in the sphere ofinternational policy and strategy'' (2002b, page 475, my emphasis). These initiativesbring forth and work at the limits of (the self in) the present and, as Patton (2005)aptly points out, it is this which constitutes Foucault and the CICP's ethico-politicalright as `groundless'öthe fact that, while their initiative is incited by the (non)actionsof governments, it is independent from them and `appointed by no one'.

7 Conclusion` I do not believe that the only possible point of resistance to political poweröunderstood, of course, as a state of dominationölies in the relationship of the selfto itself. I am saying that `governmentality' implies the relationship of self to itself.''

Foucault (1997b, page 300)

With the publication of Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures at the Colle© ge de France, theinterest in political governmentality within geography and the social sciences is withoutdoubt set to continue. One of the aims of this paper has been to pause and reassessthe methodological and political stakes of this endeavour and to turn away fromsocial scientific analysis (`How do governors govern?') towards the ` historico-critical''(Foucault, 1997a, page 133) impetus for Foucault's researches (`How does politicalgovernmentality become a problem of and for thought? How do we think otherwise?')

(20) For numerous variations on this argument, see Dean (2002) on liberal authoritarianism,Hindess (2001) on liberal unfreedom, Rose (2000) on circuits of exclusion, and Valverde (1996)on liberal despotism.

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There are two interrelated reasons for doing so. The first is methodological, or rathergenealogical, and the second is ethico-political. Firstly, in order for governmentalsystems to be considered fragile and contingent achievements, and to avoid anyrecourse to transcendental or empirical universalsösuch as, by asking how we mightresist modern governmentalities or how entities such as the state shift over timeöFoucault must begin with the question, ignited by governmental counter-conducts,of ` how not to be governed like that, by that, [and] in the name of those principles''(1997a, page 28, original emphasis). The reason for doing so is two-fold: ``[to]bring out the conditions of acceptability of a system [archaeology] and [to] followthe breaking points which indicate its emergence [genealogy]'' (1997a, page 54).Genealogical critique here, as Foucault (1997b, page 201) will later attest, ``does notmark out impassable boundaries or describe closed systems; [instead] it brings tolight transformable singularities.'' Secondly, by embracing the critical attitude foundin pastoral counter-conducts, Foucault is able to point to, or at least move towards,a political ethos as well. As we have seen, political governmentality involves modesof objectivation (how the subject becomes problematised as an object for governmentalintervention) and modes of subjectivation (the subject's ethical relation to itself as agoverned subject). These are formed and modified through games of truth. Althoughnot having utilised this language, other authors have taken up Foucault's equivocalusage of the term conduct to incorporate the ways that individuals are led to act uponthemselves as ethical subjects (see, for example, Burchell, 1993; Dean, 1995; Rose, 1998).Yet their understanding of ethical self-formation tends towards political subjection ordomination (What I am? What I must be?) rather than ethical self-transfiguration(What, therefore, am I? What might I become?). The reasons for this are as muchhistorical as they are methodological and can be tied to Foucault's genealogy of theindividualising pastoral roots of modern political governmentality. For Foucault,pastoral power entails a mode of subjectivation (or subjection) that makes individuals`subjects'; it ties them to their own identity through self-knowledge, while simulta-neously subjecting them to an external power via the objectifying knowledges of`man' (Foucault, 2002, page 331; 2007, pages 123 ^ 129). In other words, modern polit-ical governmentality instills a form of reflexivity or self-forming that, in and of itself,does not require ethical self-transfiguration, merely the self-transformations requiredto suit the current governmental regime of truth. Indeed, it is this factor that setsFoucault's (2006) sights towards Greek antiquity, during which time the subject's ethicalself-transfiguration in relation to the acquisition of truth is more central (Han, 1995;Lea, 2009). Still, by focusing on the ethico-political dimension of governmental counter-conducts, through which the experience of desubjugation opens up a space to questionthe ethical relationship of the self to itself, Foucault implies, at least in principle,that modern political governmentality can never fully exhaust the freedom of thesubject that it ``seeks to know and to subjugate'' (Butler, 2002, page 222). It is forthis reason that counter-conducts are central not only to Foucault's methodologybut also to the possibility of transfigurative critique in an era of modern politicalgovernmentality.

Acknowledgements. A version of this paper was presented at the Dehumanisation Workshop at theInstitute of Advanced Study in Durham in March 2009. I thank those who participated at thattime. I appreciate the comments of Stuart Elden and the anonymous reviewers who offeredhelpful suggestions on improving the manuscript. Special thanks to Ben Anderson, Camila Bassi,and Margo Huxley for engaging with an earlier draft of this paper and for their support andencouragement.

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