Foucault-L mail-list

Hello list members,

I was wondering if anyone could offer any advice or references with regards 
to the tensions between the domains/realms of government to which Foucault 
referred in his later governmental work. I am particularly interested in 
the way in which ?biopolitical? and ?economic? rationalities may have come 
into conflict. Colin Gordon mentioned such tensions in his introduction to 
the Foucault Effect, namely, the effects on the urban environment and 
working classes of un-regulated laissz faire economics. Mitchell Dean has 
also commented on the tensions between rationalities that may reasonably be 
said to coexist within a regime of liberal governmentality.

To set some context, I am interpreting the private writings a 
low(ish)-level administrator in colonial India, who was put in charge of 
urban improvement in the 1930s. His views were incredibly ambivalent 
towards the central government, but this was not just the colonial, and 
psychological, ambivalence of Homi Bhabha. Rather, this was a commitment to 
the colonial ideas of Progress and Improvement, but a growing distaste for 
imperial financial restrictions. As such, a tension became apparent between 
the colonial economic model of non-intervention and maximum profit and the 
emerging European model of welfare in which the lives of the ?native? 
population should have been cared for. This tension was also, of course, in 
evidence in European cities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, but I 
suspect it was starker and longer lasting in the colonial context.

Any advice greatly appreciated!

Many thanks

Steve



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Dr Stephen Legg
Department of Geography
University of Cambridge
Downing Place
Cambridge
CB2 3EN
www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/legg/
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