Security, territory, and colonial populations

Abstract

This chapter explores Foucault’s ([1978b] 2007) Security, Territory, Population lecture series, which situates the extremely influential Governmentality (Foucault, [1978a] 2001) lecture in the context of the 12 other lectures delivered that year (Foucault, 2000, pp. 67–71). It will also draw comparisons with The Birth of Biopolitics (Foucault, [1979b] 2008) lectures delivered the following year, which extend the methodological and empirical matter of the former work. These lectures contain explicit considerations of empire, which have been notoriously absent in Foucault’s other work (see Legg, 2007a). But they should also be of interest to postcolonial scholars who are keen to follow Young’s (2001, p. 386) injunction that postcolonial theorists consider discourses beyond the textual, so as to explore their materiality, heterogeneity and power. The lectures provide an invaluable resource to those concerned with colonial and postcolonial government, in the broad sense of the conduct of conduct.