側記｜拉納比爾・薩瑪達系列演講II 重探米歇爾・傅柯的《安全、領土與人口》
2026-05-19
Event Report II: Revisiting Michel Foucault's Security, Territory, Population
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Author: Po Yee Ip (Master’s Student, Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies)
Abstract:
On March 5, 2026, Professor Ranabir Samaddar delivered a profound, reflexive lecture titled “Revisiting Michel Foucault’s Security, Territory, Population.” Professor Samaddar situated Foucault’s 1977–1978 lectures within the context of unresolved questions from his previous series, Society Must Be Defended, while exploring Foucault's unacknowledged intellectual debt to Karl Marx. In this reading, Samaddar reframed the text as a genealogy of the modern city, offering the pivotal insight that the security apparatus is what constitutes the modern city as a distinct political regime.
Introduction: The Other Foucault in His Laboratory of Thought
On March 5, 2026, Professor Ranabir Samaddar delivered a profound and reflexive lecture titled Revisiting Michel Foucault’s Security, Territory, Population. He centered on Michel Foucault’s seminal lecture series, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978, originally published in French in 2004.
Professor Samaddar began by contextualizing the publication of these lectures. He noted that Foucault never intended these transcripts to be published, yet their emergence—thanks to the efforts of the French sociologist and Foucault’s partner, Daniel Defert, and the French government’s investment in translation—has complicated Foucault’s intellectual trajectories and run parallel from his polished, formal seminal works, including Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) or The History of Sexuality (1976).
Professor Samaddar suggested that “the other Foucault” was present in his oral teaching, whose voice demonstrated a more apparent “provisionality” and “militancy”. He described Foucault’s argumentation in his lecture as always opening new paths and inconsistent with his line of thought, which was why it was futile to summarize Foucault’s lecture series. Therefore, Professor Samaddar described the lectures as a “laboratory” where Foucault experimented with arguments, often producing insights that were “incongruent” or “sudden,” breaking away from established paths to explore new intellectual territories.
Professor Samaddar’s presentation was not merely a summary of Foucault’s words but a reinterpretation of Foucault’s lecture through the lens of the modern city. Although Foucault does not explicitly claim to be writing a history of urbanization, Professor Samaddar argues that the development of the three titular concepts—security, territory, and population—is the story of how the modern city came into being.
Foucault’s Thought in Transition: Moving Beyond Society Must Be Defended and the Embryo of Governmentality
To further establish the context of Foucault’s thought, Professor Samaddar commenced with Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976, the lecture series just one year prior to Security, Territory, Population. Society Must Be Defended was one of Foucault’s most significant lecture series, which anticipated the concept of biopolitics. Society Must Be Defended famously inverted Carl von Clausewitz’s dictum that “war is a continuation of politics by other means,” into “politics is a continuation of war by other means.” Professor Samaddar suggested that Foucault seemed to grow uncomfortable with the “politics-as-war” model, finding it potentially tautological. If politics is the continuation of war by political means, the political is the unexplained gap in Society Must Be Defended.
Professor Samaddar noted that the relation between the two courses, with merely a one-year gap, was extremely intriguing. It marked a turning point in Foucault's research: after taking a leave from the Collège de France during 1976-1977, following the lecture on Society Must Be Defended, he went to the United States. After his sabbatical year, he returned with a novel research direction. Unlike the previous lecture, Security, Territory, Population delves into the question of governmentality and acts as an intermediary between the two phases of Foucault’s research, from discipline and war, to biopolitics and governmentality.
In the transitional phase, Security, Territory, Population obliquely addressed the notion of biopolitics, whereas his lecture, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979, delivered a year later, further illustrated biopolitics. However, Professor Samaddar argued that Foucault’s lengthy illustration of pastoral power and governmentality in Security, Territory, Population seemed to submerge his original proposition of discussing security, territory, and population. New questions arose: What is security? Did Foucault imply that the government is the entity to provide security? Does it mean that biopolitical management is the means to ensure security? While Foucault did not make clear statements, Professor Samaddar urged us to take these questions seriously.
The Specter of Marx in Foucault: “Marx is our Machiavelli”
Aligned with a wealth of scholarly literature and Foucault’s acknowledgment of Karl Marx as the pioneer of modern thought, Professor Samaddar indicated Foucault’s lifelong “battle” and “obsession” with Marx. He regarded Punitive Society: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1972-1973, for example, as deeply indebted to Marx’s inquiries into primitive accumulation, wages, and struggles between labor and capitalists.
In the same vein, Security, Territory, Population examines the economy in the first part, moves on to the concept of pastoral power, and then returns to the question of the modern city and capitalism. Professor Samaddar underscored Marxist inheritance and Foucault’s attempt to move beyond Society Must Be Defended as the entry points of reading Security, Territory, Population.
The Mechanism of Security Apparatus: from Production to Circulation
The very notion of security conveys anticipatory measures to manage a range of possibilities and prevent dangers yet to come from actualizing, whereas discipline entails punishments for offenders after immoral acts are enacted.
Professor Samaddar elaborated on Foucault’s example of grain production to further contextualize the difference between security and discipline. In the medieval period, interruptions in grain production are attributed to known causes, mainly natural disasters and excessive taxation. However, in the 16th and 17th centuries, with the rise of the physiocrats and mercantilists, the focus shifted from production to circulation. Not only did the production require protection, but the transportation infrastructure also needed attention to avoid grain circulation from being hampered.
Transcending Machiavelli: The Rise of Modern Governmentality
Afterward, Professor Samaddar revisited Foucault’s critique of The Prince. Machiavelli’s The Prince is primarily concerned with the acquisition and retention of power—how to protect the city from external attack and internal rebellion. While Machiavelli advised military techniques for governance, Foucault argued that Machiavelli lacked a true science of urban management. Foucault emphasized how kings acquire power, whether through succession or through popular legitimation. The king could not always oppress the people for the sake of governance.
Professor Samaddar quoted Foucault’s remark on Marx and Machiavelli at length, “He (Machiavelli) did not define an art of government, but an art of government will be looked for in what he said. This phenomenon, in which one searches in a discourse for what is taking place, while actually only seeking to force it to say something, is not unique. From this point of view, Marx is our Machiavelli: the discourse does not stem from him, but it is through him that it is conducted.”[1] According to Professor Samaddar, Foucault did not see Machiavelli as the founder of modern governance, but rather that all disputes about governmentality must be addressed through Machiavelli. More importantly, Foucault mentioned the critical role of Marx in the argumentation of governmentality.
The Conjuncture of Security, Territory, Population: The Birth of Modern City
It is worth noting that security, territory, and population are not naturally correlated elements, but rather a particular historical conjuncture in the 16th and 17th centuries. Empires lacked strictly defined borders; therefore, security did not necessarily concern territories. On the contrary, territory has been the kernel of the city since the 16th and 17th centuries, in conjunction with the end of rent-seeking agriculture, the emergence of machinery, and the rise of modern labor. The change from the mode of pastoral power to the mode of governmentality constituted the birth of the modern city. While pre-modern cities were divided along rigid racial or ethnic lines, the modern city (managed by governmentality) uses flexible and permeable boundaries.
Returning to the point of departure of this lecture, Professor Samaddar defined the modern city as an apparatus of security and an institution operating within a fragmented territory. By shattered territories, Professor Samaddar referred to the city's geography, with porous boundaries, where people with diverse socio-economic backgrounds cohabited. Notably, the city is territorial, without a seamless continuity.
The city becomes an apparatus of rule where public health, police power, and military strategy form a continuum. Professor Samaddar pointed out that Foucault’s analysis of police power in the 16th century was much broader than our modern definition; it referred to the total rearing of the population, akin to a parent raising a child.
Historical Intelligibility
A recurring phrase in Professor Samaddar’s lecture was “historical intelligibility.” Foucault was not interested in writing history in a narrow, traditional sense, as he himself said, “I have never written anything other than fictions.”[2] Historical intelligibility is another expression of minor, insurgent histories, expanding the histories that we are familiar with.
Professor Samaddar wrapped up the lecture by juxtaposing Foucault’s biopolitics and Marx’s living labor. Foucault had multiple attempts to define the term biopolitics, evident in his seminal work, History of Sexuality: Volume I. He regarded biopolitics as the politics of life itself. Professor Samaddar revisited this concept with Marx’s reproduction of labor. The nature of the reproduction of labor is the life of labor, where a use value is produced, and an exchange value is produced at the expense of human labor.
As a closing remark, Professor Samaddar himself demonstrated the method of historical intelligibility in this lecture. Although Foucault’s lecture was adventurous with multiple lines of thought, and sometimes reluctant to focus on a clear statement or directly acknowledge his inheritance, Professor Samaddar revisited the work through different lines of the history of thought, especially through Marx. More importantly, Professor Samaddar took us on a refreshing journey through Security, Territory, Population, an inquiry into the beginnings of the modern city as a regime.
Notes
[1] Michel Foucault, translated by Graham Burchell, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p.243.
[2] Michel Foucault, ‘The History of Sexuality’, in Colin Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p.193.
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