relationships (Foucault 1982a, pp. 219-222). “Foucault’s hypothesis” – as I propose to call it
by contrast of Nietzsche’s hypothesis – is characterized by inquiring into the conditions of a
consensus or the prerequisites of acceptance. As a consequence, the concept of
governmentality represents a theoretical move beyond the problematics of consensus and will
on the one hand and conquest and war on the other: “The relationship proper to power would
not therefore be sought on the side of violence or of struggle, nor on that of voluntary linking
(all of which can, at best, only be the instruments of power), but rather in the area of the
singular mode of action, neither warlike nor juridical, which is government” (Foucault 1982a,
p. 221; emphasis added).
(2) This takes us to the second feature of governmentality. Governmentality is introduced by
Foucault to study the "autonomous" individual's capacity for self-control and how this is
linked to forms of political rule and economic exploitation. In this regard, Foucault’s interest
for processes of subjectivation does not signal that he abandons the problematics of power,
but on the contrary, it displays a continuation and correction of his older work, that renders it
more precise and concrete. It is right to speak of a „break“ but this rupture is not between the
genealogy of power and a theory of the subject, but inside the problematics of power. The
concept of power is not abandoned but the object of a radical „theoretical shift” (Foucault
1985a, p. 6). Foucault corrects the findings of the earlier studies in which he investigated
subjectivity primarily with a view to "docile bodies" and had too strongly stressed processes
of discipline. Now the notion of government is used to investigate the relations between
technologies of the self and technologies of domination (see Foucault 1988a):
“I think that if one wants to analyze the genealogy of the subject in Western civilization, he
has to take into account not only techniques of domination but also techniques of the self.
Let’s say: he has to take into account the interaction between those two types of techniques –
techniques of domination and techniques of the self. He has to take into account the points
where the technologies of domination of individuals over one another have recourse to
processes by which the individual acts upon himself. And conversely, he has to take into
account the points where the techniques of the self are integrated into structures of coercion
and domination. The contact point, where the individuals are driven by others is tied to the
way they conduct themselves, is what we can call, I think government. Governing people, in
the broad meaning of the word, governing people is not a way to force people to do what the
governor wants; it is always a versatile equilibrium, with complementarity and conflicts