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stelhan's review against another edition
3.0
3.75 I could listen to Foucault talk about bio-politics all day.
hlnaima's review against another edition
2.0
Intéressant par moment. J'ai un peu décroché sur certains cours. Ne va pas droit à l'idée.
beccabeccalee's review against another edition
3.0
Sometimes Foucault really bugs me because he says things that seem quite common-sense-ical but with an assortment of new terminology that can be hard to get a handle on. Still, it's no doubt Foucault is ingeniously in tune with the various human factors building up the social framework of biopower in contemporary politics.
sh00's review against another edition
4.0
Один из интересных форматов лекции - это отчётная лекция, и именно такие читал Мишель Фуко в Коллеж де Франс в бытность свою профессором. Странноватое учебное заведение не проводило вступительных испытаний, а вход в лекторий был свободным и бесплатным. Цикл лекций "Нужно защищать общество" был таким популярным, что Фуко читал его сразу в двух аудиториях - в первой, с трудом освободив себе место на столе среди магнитофонов студентов, пишущих его слова, говорил сам профессор, а во второй происходило нечто акусматическое - голос Фуко транслировался в неё через динамики, народ внимал лектору, лектора не видя. Фуко хотел взаимодействия с аудиторией, но, кажется, так и не получил его, даже когда попытался уменьшить число посещающих путём переноса лекций на неудобное время. Не помогло.
Отчёты были именно отчётами, и из них видно, как Фуко пришёл ко всем трудам, которые были выпущены позднее - "Надзирать и наказывать" (я говорил об этой вещи летом) и трёхтомнике "История сексуальности". И видно переосмысление ранних трудов.
Ценное издание в смысле лучшего понимания наследия прекрасного философа, коль уж за историей хода его мысли всё равно не уследить. Ну, я в том смысле, что лекции непоследовательны, да Фуко этого и не скрывает.
Отчёты были именно отчётами, и из них видно, как Фуко пришёл ко всем трудам, которые были выпущены позднее - "Надзирать и наказывать" (я говорил об этой вещи летом) и трёхтомнике "История сексуальности". И видно переосмысление ранних трудов.
Ценное издание в смысле лучшего понимания наследия прекрасного философа, коль уж за историей хода его мысли всё равно не уследить. Ну, я в том смысле, что лекции непоследовательны, да Фуко этого и не скрывает.
florisw's review against another edition
4.0
I'm not much of a Foucault reader, and I don't have any plans to start becoming one any time soon, but I was recommended Society Must Be Defended as the book to read if I was only going to read one. Having finished it I can probably recommend it to others for exactly the same reason. By virtue of essentially being an annotated transcription of his in-person lectures delivered in early-1976, the whole work feels quite conversational and easier to digest. It's well-edited, and comes bookended with two helpful introductory and contextual essays. You still get some of the typically dense scholarly writing you might find in any other academic text, but each chapter is very well signposted and clearly structured (even accounting for his small tangents). Representing a turning point in Foucault's scholarship, it is also useful in giving the reader a good summary of his main research foci of the 1970s.
I found the first and last few chapters of the work the most useful. They include helpful outlines of his previous research (1971-1976) into power and discipline, and his 'future' (1976-1980) research into historicism, war, biopolitics, etc. Chapter 2 in particular gives a great impression of his methodology. Chapter 3 defines what he means by the "(Philosophico-Juridicial) discourse" and how it shifted in the 17th and 18th to focus more on individual rights (a more "racist" discourse - a term he spends most of the book defining). This sets up his analysis - mainly of 17th/18th century French writers, and mainly Henri de Boulainvilliers - of history-writing and war as the analytical lens for understanding history and politics. These middle chapters on Boulainvilliers and French origin stories I found much less gripping to read. Beyond France he only expands a bit to early modern Britain, especially its revolutionary and colonial periods.
The final chapter I found much more readable. It provides an overview of Biopolitics, State racism, sovereignty over life and death, and how the Nazi State embodied (institutionalised) Biopower in a dictatorship. The course summary wasn't super helpful beyond presenting some overarching questions about war as the "analyzer" of politics. The final "Situating" chapter by Alessandro Fontana and Mauro Bertani is maybe a bit too long to be considered a concise contextualisation of Foucault and his lectures in the mid-1970s, but, like the book overall, the beginning and end of it are very useful for giving insight into the lectures in the context of Foucault's scholarship.
I found the first and last few chapters of the work the most useful. They include helpful outlines of his previous research (1971-1976) into power and discipline, and his 'future' (1976-1980) research into historicism, war, biopolitics, etc. Chapter 2 in particular gives a great impression of his methodology. Chapter 3 defines what he means by the "(Philosophico-Juridicial) discourse" and how it shifted in the 17th and 18th to focus more on individual rights (a more "racist" discourse - a term he spends most of the book defining). This sets up his analysis - mainly of 17th/18th century French writers, and mainly Henri de Boulainvilliers - of history-writing and war as the analytical lens for understanding history and politics. These middle chapters on Boulainvilliers and French origin stories I found much less gripping to read. Beyond France he only expands a bit to early modern Britain, especially its revolutionary and colonial periods.
The final chapter I found much more readable. It provides an overview of Biopolitics, State racism, sovereignty over life and death, and how the Nazi State embodied (institutionalised) Biopower in a dictatorship. The course summary wasn't super helpful beyond presenting some overarching questions about war as the "analyzer" of politics. The final "Situating" chapter by Alessandro Fontana and Mauro Bertani is maybe a bit too long to be considered a concise contextualisation of Foucault and his lectures in the mid-1970s, but, like the book overall, the beginning and end of it are very useful for giving insight into the lectures in the context of Foucault's scholarship.
cythera15's review against another edition
Good excerpt on biopolitics - the last lecture (17 March 1976) was interesting. It outlines how biopolitics becomes an important power after the nineteenth century (presumably into the twentieth century) and the role that racism plays in the new regulatory system, giving those in power the right to terminate life. Foucault meant to use this to explain the Nazi government and the Holocaust, but I saw many connections to how the contemporary world exercises its power to make live and let die - from how COVID-19 was dealt with to how some deaths are sanctioned on the screen in a way that others are not. I wondered if speculative fiction can take the questions Foucault raises further. There's still a sense of speciesism and racism in the futuristic worlds that are depicted. But the stakes change when the spectrum of human life expands beyond those biologically of the same species. (I think) For the most part, I don't really care much about old French history and was unsure what kind of provocation he is making with the genealogy. I don't think I am going to go back to it, at least not for a while.
kostia_gorobets's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced