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Peasant farmers worked on the land
during the Middle Ages making vast
profits for their lords. Feudal systems
imposed control on people, rather than
coherent government.traditional approach to inquiry,
where philosophers look for the
universal and invariant foundations
of knowledge, Foucault looks at how
a subject is constituted across
history, and how this leads to its
modern appearance.
Foucault’s series of lectures
on governmentality examined
the ways in which the modern
idea of an autonomous, individual
self developed in concert with
the idea of the nation-state. He
was particularly interested in
seeing how these two concepts
co-determined each other’s
existence, and changed with the
political rationality of the time.
Medieval governance
Foucault’s investigations trace the
shifts in ways of governing that
have taken place in different eras
and places. Looking back to Europe
in the Middle Ages (c.500–1500), he
says that the modern nation-state
as we know it did not exist; nor did
governmentality. People lived in a
“state of justice” that imposed blunt
laws and customs, such as putting
offenders in the stocks, in order
to integrate people into their
community. This was the age
of feudalism, when monarchs,
who were seen as God’s divine
representatives on Earth, relied
on various lords to keep the local
people under control. The network
of lords with allegiance to a king
offered a way of maintaining order
across large areas of land.
The lords earned their titles,
castles, and land rights by
providing military service and
support to the monarch. Eventually
these privileges became hereditary.
Peasant farmers, or serfs, were
obliged to work the land, making
large profits for their rulers. Such a
system, in which there was a very
clear and obvious exercise of power
by individuals, meant that there
was little sense of coherent
governance: the various nobles
often ruled in very different ways.
Conflict and internal warfare were
also common. Monarchs’ subjects
did not think of themselves as
bound to a national identity but
instead were tied to their locality
and aligned to their feudal lord.A new way to govern
According to Foucault, the question
of governing became a far greater
problem in the 16th century
when medieval feudalism fell into
decline. As the ideas of empire and
territorial expansion began to take
hold, the question of how to govern
the individual, the family, and the
state became a central issue.
Governmentality was born.
The break with the feudal
system also led to a rise in conflict
between states. As a result, it
became increasingly important that
a state knew both its own capacity
and strength and the strength of its
rivals. Foucault claims this is why
the phenomenon of the “police”
emerged in the 16th century.
These forces not only provided the
government with security but were
also able to measure and assess
the strength of the state. The police
enabled the easy governance of ❯❯See also: Michel Foucault 52–55; 302–03 ■ David McCrone 163 ■ Norbert Elias 180–81 ■ Max Weber 220–23 ■
Robert Michels 260
THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS
I wanted to study the art of
governing, that is to say, the
reasoned way of governing
best and, at the same time,
reflection on the best possible
way of governing.
Michel Foucault