Michel Foucault

The Shepherd's Power

A set of lectures that Michel Foucault gave at the College de France during the late 1970s was recently published under the title, Security, Territory and Population. They trace out the genealogy of what Foucault calles “governmentality,” which is a snazzy way of talking about the development of the practice of governing men. An important part of that genealogy is what I’m writing about in this essay: the pastorate.