Една различна биополитика: Фуко чете Мойо
Another Biopolitics: Foucault’s Reading of Moheau

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the concept of “biopower” in the light of Michel Foucault’s courses at the Collège de France, especially his lectures between 1978 and 1980. After having offered a definition of “biopower” and “biopolitics”, I will discuss in more details Foucault’s reading of the great book of the French protodemography Recherches et Considérations sur la population de la France [Researches and Considerations on the Population of France] by Jean-Baptiste Moheau. I will try then to answer the question: Why has Foucault defined this book being “the first great text of biopolitics”? My answer points out that in Moheau the government of the human life is not restricted to a technique of intervention in the vital human milieu; it rather formulates explicitly the principles of a “government of morals” – one that addresses particularly the human reproduction. As a result, it is getting clear that the “biopolitical governmentalization of life” must have already been a response of another project of mastering one’s own body and one’s own descendance – a project that was visible namely by the extension of the contraceptive techniques in the popular milieus in France, starting in the middle of the 18th century. To sum up, my thesis has not been designed as a discussion of the Foucauldian thesis; it is rather an extension of his theorizing on biopower, and it has been made possible namely through the lectures Foucault had done at the Collège de France.

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