Although Machiavelli would appear to be only a minor figure in Foucault's genealogy of modernity, this article examines his 1977–1978 lectures at the Collège de France and argues that the author of The Prince plays a pivotal role in the development of ‘governmental reason’ and its critique. These lectures indicate how The Prince serves as the negative touchstone for the emergence of an extensive and evolving discourse on government, confirming that Machiavelli was more than a passing interest for Foucault. I (...) consider two ‘Anti-Machiavellian’ episodes in Foucault's genealogy as especially significant: the sixteenth-century discourses of the state and the eighteenth-century discourses of political economy. These moments are significant both in showing how the idea of government hinges on a repudiation of the political lessons of The Prince and in establishing the link between governmentality and another term so important for Foucault's thinking in this period – biopower. Finally, I show how the art of critique – or, what Foucault describes as ‘the art of not being governed quite so much’ – finds a timely resource in the figure of Machiavelli. (shrink)

Technology takes an unprecedented position in contemporary society. In particular, it has become part and parcel of governmental attempts to manufacture life in new ways. Such ideas concerning the governance of life organize around the same contention: that technology and life are, in fact, highly interconnectable. This is surprising because if one enters the sites of techno-scientific experimentation, those visions turn out to be much frailer and by no means “in place” yet. Rather, they afford or enforce constant interfacing work, (...) a particular mode of manufacturing life, rendering disparate, sturdy, and often surprisingly incompatible things available for one another. Here, we contend that both of those aspects, pervasive rationalities of interconnectability and practices of interfacing mark the cornerstones of what we call a new techno-bio-politics of life. In order to grasp the government of life under the technological condition, we must understand how both human and non-human entities are being rendered interconnectable and re-worked through practices of interfacing. We take neuro-technology and care robotics as two illustrative cases. Our analysis shows that the contemporary government of life is not primarily concerned with life itself in its biological re-constitution but rather with life as it is interfaced with and through technology. (shrink)