In the 1976 lecture "Il faut défendre la société", Michel Foucault questions the relevance of the war model for analyzing power relations. Michel Foucault defines two forms of power: disciplinary power, which is applied to the body through surveillance techniques and punitive institutions, and what he will henceforth call "bio-power", which is exercised over the population, life and the living. Analyzing discourses on race warfare and narratives of conquest (notably Boulainvilliers), Michel Foucault traces the genealogy of bio-power and state racism. The logic of the relationship between power and resistance is not that of law, but that of struggle: it is not of the order of law, but of strategy. The question, then, is whether Clausewitz's aphorism should be reversed, and whether politics should be seen as the continuation of war by other means.
This summary is published with the kind permission of Editions du Seuil. It is taken from the back cover of the book Il faut défendre la société . Lecture at the Collège de France. 1976 by Michel Foucault, published on February 27, 1997.
Audio recordings of Michel Foucault 's lectures were made by his public, notably by Gilbert Burlet, and given at the Collège de France.