Abstract
General features of apparatuses of security (III). Normation (normation) and normakation. ∼ The example of the epidemic (smallpox) and inoculation campaigns in the eighteenth century. The emergence of new notions: case, risk, danger, and crisis. ∼ The forms of normaliZation in discipline and in mechanisms of security. ∼ Deployment of a new political technology: the government ofpopulations. ∼ The problem ofpopulation in the mercantilists and the physiocrats. The population as operator (operateur) of transformations in domains of knowledge:from the analysis of wealth to political economy,from natural history to biology, from general grammar to historical philology.
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Footnotes
Hans Kelsen (1881–1973). Born in Prague, Kelsen taught public law and philosophy at Vienna from 1919 to 1929, then at Cologne from 1930 to 1933. Dismissed by the Nazis, he pursued his career at Geneva (1933–1938) and Berkeley (1942–1952). He was a founder of the Vienna School (around the Zeitschrift für öffentl iches Recht created in 1914) which radicalized the doctrine of juridical positivism, and in his Reine Rechtslehre (Vienna: 1960, 2nd edn.); French translation by H. Thévenaz, Théorie pure du droit, 1st edn. (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1953), 2nd edn., trans. Ch. Eisenmann (Paris: Dalloz, 1962); English translation by Max Knight, Pure Theory of Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) he defended a normativist conception of law, according to which the law constitutes a hierarchical and dynamic system of norms connected to each other by a relationship of imputation (distinct from the relationship of causality on which scientific reasoning is based), that is to say, “the relation between a certain behavior as condition and a sanction as consequence” (General Theory of Norms, ch. 7, § II, p. 24). To avoid infinite regress (every juridical power can only derive from higher juridical authorization), this system gets its validity from a basic norm (Grundnorm), not posited like other norms, but presupposed and thereby suprapositive, which “represents the ultimate reason for the validity of all the legal norms forming the legal order” (ibid. ch. 59, p. 255). See also his posthumous work, Allgemeine Theorie der Normen (Vienna: Manz Verlag, 1979); English translation by Michael Hartney, General Theory of Norms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). On Kelsen, see the comments of G. Canguilhem, Le Normal et le Pathologique (Paris: PUF, 1975, 3r edn.) pp. 184–185; English translation, On the Normal and the Pathological, trans. Carolyn R. Fawcett (Dordrecht and London: D. Reidel, 1978) p. 153.
See the doctoral medical thesis of Anne-Marie Moulin, La Vaccination anti-variolique. Approche historique de l’évolution des idées sur les maladies transmissibles et leur prophylaxie (Paris: Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6)-Faculté de Médecine Pitié Salpétrière, 1979). The author of this thesis gave an account of “the campaigns of variolization in the eighteenth century,” in 1978 in Foucault’s course (see below, Course Summary, p. 367). See also, J. Hecht, “Un débat médical au XVIIIe siècle, l’inoculation de la petite vérole,” Le Concours médical, 18, 1 May 1959, pp. 2147–2152, and the two works that appeared the year before this course: P.E. Razzell, The Conquest of Smallpox: The impact of inoculation on smallpox mortality in the 18t century (Firle: Caliban Books, 1977) and G. Miller, The Adoption of Inoculation for Smallpox in England and France (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1977) that Foucault was able to consult.
From 1800 Jenner’s vaccination progressively replaces inoculation. See E. Jenner, An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae (1798) (London: Dawson, 1966, reproduction of the 1st edition); R. Le Droumaguet, À propos du centenaire de Jenner. Notes sur l’histoire des premières vaccinations contre la variole, Medical thesis, Belfort-Mulhouse, 1923; A-M. Moulin, La Vaccination anti-variolique, pp. 33–36.
See A.-M. Moulin, La Vaccination anti-variolique, p. 36: “[At the end of the eighteenth century] medicine had not elucidated the profound meaning of inoculations,” and p. 42, this quotation of Berthollet concerning the “modification” introduced into the organism by the vaccine: “What is the nature of this difference and this change? No-one knows; experience alone proves its reality” (Exposition des faits recueillis jusqu ’a présent concernant les effets de la vaccination, 1812).
Inoculation was practiced in China from the seventeenth century and in Turkey (see A.-M. Moulin, La Vaccination anti-variolique, pp. 12–22). For Chinese practice see the letter of Father La Coste in 1714 which appeared in the Mémoires de Trévoux, and, for Turkey, the debate on inoculation in the Royal Society, in England, drawing on merchant’s reports of the East India Company. On 1 April 1717, Lady Montaigu, wife of the English ambassador in Istanbul and one of the most zealous propagandists of inoculation in her country, wrote to a correspondent: “Smallpox, so fatal and frequent among us, is here rendered inoffensive by the discovery of inoculation (…). There is a group of old women here who are specialists in this operation” (quoted by Moulin, ibid. pp. 19–20).
See A.-M. Moulin, La Vaccination anti-variolique, p. 26: “In 1760, the mathematician Bernoulli imparts the statistics more rigorously [than J. Jurin’s tables, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in 1725], which is in fact the only theoretical justification for inoculation. (…) If inoculation is adopted, the result will be a gain of several thousand persons for civil society; even if it is deadly, as it kills children in the cradle, it is preferable to smallpox that causes the death of adults who have become useful to society; if it is true that the generalization of inoculation risks replacing the great epidemics with a permanent state of endemic disease, the danger is less because smallpox is a generalized eruption and inoculation affects only a small part of the surface of the skin.” Bernoulli concludes with the demonstration that if one neglects the point of view of the individual, “it will always be geometrically true that the interest of Princes is to favor inoculation” (D. Bernoulli, “Essai d’une nouvelle analyse de la mortalité causée par la petite vérole et des avantages de l’inoculation pour la prévenir,” Histoires et Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences, 2, 1766). This essay, which dates from 1760, aroused the hostile reaction of D’Alembert, 12 November 1760, at the Academy of Sciences. For a detailed analysis of Bernoulli’s method of calculation and of the quarrel with D’Alembert, see H. Le Bras, Naissance de la mortalité (Paris: Gallimard-Le Seuil, “Hautes Études,” 2000) pp. 335–342.
On this notion, see M. Foucault, Naissance de la clinique (Paris: PUF “Galien,” 1963) p. 24 (reference to L.S.D. Le Brun, Traité théorique sur les maladies épidémiques [Paris: Didot le jeune, 1776] pp. 2–3) and p. 28 (reference to F. Richard de Hautersierck, Recueil d’observations. Médecine des hôpitaux militaires [Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1766] vol. 1, pp. xxiv-xxvii); English translation by A.M. Sheridan Smith, The Birth of the Clinic. An Archeology of Medical Perception (London: Tavistock Publications, 1973) p. 25 and p. 29 [where “maladies régnantes” is translated as “common diseases”; G.B.].
Emmanuel Étienne Duvillard (1755–1832), Analyse et Tableaux de l’influence de la petite vérole sur la mortalité à chaque âge, et de celle qu’un préservatif tel que la vaccine peut avoir sur la population et la longévité (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1806). On Duvillard, a “specialist of population statistics, but also a theorist of insurance and the calculation of annuities,” see G. Thuillier, “Duvillard et la statistique en 1806,” Études et Documents (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1989) vol. 1, pp. 425–435; A. Desrosières, La Politique des grands nombres. Histoire de la raison statistique (Paris: La Découverte, 2000 [1993]) pp. 48–54.
Foucault is alluding here to the writings of Francis Bacon, credited by a number of dictionaries with the invention of the word “population.” See, for example, Dictionnaire historique de la langue française. Le Robert.In reality this word cannot be found in Bacon and only appears in some late translations [see end of this note; G.B.]. The first occurrence of the English word seems to go back to the Political Discourses (1751) of David Hume, and the French term only began to circulate in the second half of the eighteenth century. Montesquieu was still unaware of it in 1748. He speaks of the “number of men” in De l’esprit des lois, Book XVIII, ch. 10, in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, “Bibliothèque de la Plèiade,” 1958) vol. 2, p. 536; English translation by Anne Cohler, Basia Miller, Harold Stone, The Spirit of The Laws (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) p. 290, or of inhabitants, of “propagation of the species” (ibid. Book XXIII, ch. 26) p. 710 and p. 711; trans., ibid. p. 453. See Lettres persanes (1721), CXXII, ibid. p. 313; English translation by C.J. Betts, Persian Letters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) Letter 120, p. 219. On the other hand, from Persian Letters he uses the negative form of the word, “depopulation” (Letter CXVII, ibid. p. 305; trans., ibid. Letter 117, p. 211); De l’esprit des lois, XXIII, ch. 19, p. 695, and ch. 28, p. 711; The Spirit of the Laws, pp. 439–440 and p. 454. The use of the word goes back to the fourteenth century (see Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française [Paris: J.-J. Pauvert, 1956] vol. 2, p. 1645) in the active sense of the verb “se dépeupler.” Absent from the first edition of Herbert’s Essai sur la police générale des grains in 1753, “population” appears in the 1755 edition. For a recent clarification of the question, see H. Le Bras, his preface to H. Le Bras, ed., L’Invention des populations (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2000), and I. Tamba, “Histoires de démographe et de linguiste: le couple population/dépopulation,” Linx, Paris X, -47, 2002, pp. 1–6. [It is not true that the word “population” cannot be found in Bacon. The word appears in his Essays, and precisely in the essay discussed by Foucault in some detail in the lecture of 15 March 1978, “Of Seditions and Troubles.” G.B.]
See E. Vilquin, Introduction to J. Graunt, Observations naturelles ou politiques répertoriés dans l’Index ci-après et faites sur les bulletins de mortalité de John Graunt citoyen de Londres, en rapport avec le gouvernement, la religion, le commerce, l’accroissement, l’atmosphère, les maladies et les divers changements de ladite cité, trans. E. Vilquin (Paris: INED, 1977) pp. 18–19: “The bills of mortality of London are among the first published demographic statements, but their origin is not well known. The earliest bill that has been discovered responds to a question on 21 October 1532 from the Royal Council to the Mayor of London concerning the number of deaths due to the plague (…).In 1532 and 1533 there were series of weekly bills indicating for every parish the total number of deaths and the number due to the plague. Obviously, the only reason for these bills was to give the London authorities an idea of the extent and development of the plague and therefore appear and disappear with it. The plague of 1563 gave rise to a long series of bills from 12 June 1563 to 26 July 1566. There was another series in 1754, another, continuous series, from 1578 to 1583, then from 1592 to 1595, and from 1597 to 1600. It is not impossible that the regularity of weekly bills goes back to 1563, it is only certain from 1603.”
On this question, see G. Weulersse, Le Mouvement physiocratique, vol. 2, Book V, ch. 1, pp. 268–295: “Discussion des principes du populationnisme,” and, Les Physiocratees, pp. 251–254; Joseph J. Spengler, French Predecessors of Malthus. A Study in Eighteenth-Century Wage and Population Theory (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1942) pp. 170–211; A. Landry, “Les idées de Quesnay sur la population,” Revue d’Histoire des doctrines économiques et sociales, 1909, republished in F. Quesnay et la physiocratie, vol. 1, pp. 11–49; J.-Cl. Perrot, Une histoire intellectuelle de l’économie politique, pp. 143–192: “Les économistes, les philosophes et la population.”
The essential position of the physiocrats on the subject consists in the introduction of wealth as mediating between population and subsistence. See Quesnay’s article, “Hommes” in F. Quesnay et la physiocratie, vol. 2, p. 549: “One would like to increase the population in the countryside, and one does not know that the increase of population depends beforehand on the increase of wealth.” See G. Weulersse, Les Physiocrates, pp. 252–253: “It is not that they were indifferent to the increase of population: because men contribute to the enrichment of the State in two ways, as producers and consumers. But they will only be useful producers if they produce more than they consume, that is to say if their work is accomplished with the assistance of the necessary capitals; and their consumption, similarly, will only be advantageous if they pay a good price for the commodities on which they live, that is to say equal to what foreign purchasers would pay for them: otherwise, a strong national population, far from being a resource, becomes a burden. But you begin by increasing the revenues of the land: men, called to life as it were by the abundance of wages, will multiply proportionately by themselves; this is the true populationism, but indirect of course.” There is an excellent clarification also in JJ. Spengler, French Predecessors of Malthus, pp. 172–175. On the analysis of the role of population in the physiocrats and economists, see M. Foucault, Histoire de la folie, pp. 429–430; Madness and Civilization, pp. 231–232.
See Victor Riquet[t]i, Marquis de Mirabeau (1715–1789), known as Mirabeau the Elder, L’Ami des hommes, ou Traité de la population, published under the author’s name (Avignon: 1756) 3 vols. See, L. Brocard, Les Doctrines économiques et sociales du marquis de Mirabeau dans l’ “Ami des hommes” (Paris: Giard et Brière, 1902). Mirabeau’s aphorism, taken from L’Ami des Hommes —“the measure of subsistence is that of the population” (vol. 1, p. 37) —finds its counterpart in the work of A. Goudart, Les Intérêts de la France mal entendues, dans les branches de l’agriculture, de la population, des finances &published the same year (Amsterdam: Jacques Cœur, 1756) 3 vols: “The number of men always depends upon the general degree of subsistence” and is taken up, even in its formulation in imagery (men will multiply “like mice in a barn if they have unlimited means of subsistence”) in Richard Cantillon, Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (London: Fletcher Gyles, 1755; facsimile re-publication, Paris: INED, 1952 and 1997) ch. 15, p. 47.
Abbé Pierre Jaubert, Des causes de la dépopulation et des moyens d’y remédier, published under the author’s name (London-Paris: Dessain junior, 1767).
This article, written for the Encylopédie, the publication of which was prohibited in 1757 and only taken up again in 1765, remained unpublished until 1908 (Revue d’histoire des doctrines économiques et sociales, 1). It is republished in François Quesnay et la physiocratie, vol. 2, in Œuvres, pp. 511–575. It was however partially recopied and distributed by Henry Patullo in his Essai sur l’amelioration des terres (Paris: Durand, 1758). See J.-Cl. Perrot, Une histoire intellectuelle de l’économie politique, p. 166. Quesnay’s article was replaced in the Encyclopédie by Diderot’s article “Hommes” (Politics) and Damilaville’s, “Population.” The manuscript of the article, deposited in the Bibliothèque Nationale, was only rediscovered in 1889. This is why it was not reproduced in E. Daire’s collection, Les Phys iocrates (Paris: Guillaumin, 1846). See L. Salleron, in F. Quesnay et la physiocratie, vol. 2, p. 511, note 1.
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715–1780), author of Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines (Paris: P. Mortier, 1746); English translation by Hans Aarsleff, Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, ed. Hans Aarsleff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), of the Traité des sensations (Paris: De Bure, 1754); English translation by Geraldine Carr, Condillac’s Treatise on the Sensations (London: Favil Press, 1930), and Traité des animaux (Paris: De Bure, 1755). In the Traité des sensations he maintains that there is no operation of the soul that is not a transformed sensation—hence the name of sensualism given to his doctrine—and that any sensation, whatever it is, suffices to engender all the faculties, imagining, in defense of his thesis, a statue on which he separately and successively confers the five senses. Ideology designates the philosophical movement deriving from Condillac, which begins in 1795 with the creation of the Institute (of which the Academy of moral and political sciences, to which the followers of Condillac belonged, was part). The main representative of this school was Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836), author of Élements d’idéologie, 4 vols. (Paris: Courcier, 1804–1815). Foucault, who devoted several pages to the Idéologues in Les Mots et les Choses (Paris: Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des sciences humaines,” 1966) ch. VII, pp. 253–255; English translation by A. Sheridan, The Order of Things (London: Tavistock and New York: Pantheon, 1970) ch. 7, pp. 240–243, already connected Condillac’s genetic conception with Bentham’s panoptic apparatus in his 1973–1974 lectures, Le Pouvoir psychiatrique, ed. J. Lagrange (Paris: Gallimard-Le Seuil, “Hautes Études,” 2003), lecture of 28 November 1973, p. 80; English translation by Graham Burchell, Psychiatric Power. Lectures at the Collège de France 1973–1974, English series ed. Arnold Davidson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) p. 78. On Condillac, see also Les Mots et les Choses, ch. III, pp. 74–77; The Order of Things, pp. 60–63.
See Surveiller et Punir, p. 105; Discipline and Punish, p. 102: “[The discourse of the Idéologues] provided, in effect, by means of the theory of interests, representations and signs, by the series and geneses that it reconstituted, a sort of general recipe for the exercise of power over men: the ‘mind’ as a surface of inscription for power, with semiology as its tool; the submission of bodies through the central control of ideas; the analysis of representations as a principle in a politics of bodies that was much more effective than the ritual anatomy of torture and execution. The thought of the Idéologues was not only a theory of the individual and society; it developed as a technology of subtle, effective, economic powers, in opposition to the sumptuous expenditure of the power of the sovereign.”
John Graunt (1620–1674), Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in Following Index, and Made upon the Bills of Mortality. With reference to the Government, Religion, Trade, Growth, Ayre, Disease, and the Several Changes of the Said City (London: John Martin, 1662, 5th edition 1676) republished in The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, ed. C.H. Hull (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899) vol. 2; French translation by H. Dussauze and M. Pasquier, Œuvres économiques de Sir William Petty (Paris: Giard et Brière, 1905) vol. 2, pp. 351–467; new translation by E. Vilquin, J. Graunt, Observations naturelles ou politiques (see above, note 15). An autodidact, a master draper by trade, and a friend of William Petty, Graunt had the idea of drawing up chronological tables on the basis of bills of mortality published on the occasion of the great plague that decimated London in the seventeenth century. This text is seen as the starting point of modern demography. See P. Lazersfeld, Philosophie des sciences sociales (Paris: Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des sciences humaines,” 1970) pp. 79–80: “(…) the first mortality tables, published in 1662 by John Graunt who is considered to be the founder of modern demography.” The attribution of the Natural and Political Observations to Graunt was challenged, however, in the seventeenth century in favor of Petty. See H. Le Bras, Naissance de la mortalité, p. 9, for whom “the balance swings clearly against Graunt’s paternity and in favor of that of Petty.” The counter thesis is defended by P. Kraeger, “New light on Graunt,” Population Studies, 42 (1), March 1988, pp. 129–140.
“The species, systematic unity, as for a long time the naturalists understood it, was defined for the first time by John Ray [in his Historia planarum (London: Faithorne)] in 1686 [a ‘set of individuals who, through reproduction, engender other individuals similar to themselves’]. Previously, the word was employed with very varied meanings. For Aristotle it designated small groups. Later it was confused with that of genus (genre).” E. Guyénot, Les Sciences de la vie aux XVIIe et XVIIIe. L’idée d’évolution (Paris: Albin Michel, “L’Évolution de l’humanité,” 1941) p. 360. In 1758, in the 10 edition of his Systema naturae, Linneaus includes the genus Homme in the order of Primates, distinguishing two species: Homo sapiens and Homo troglodytes (in Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, 12 edition, vol. 1, [Stockholm: Salvius, 1766] p. 28 sq.).On the birth of the concept of species in the seventeenth century, see also François Jacob, La Logique du vivant (Paris: Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des sciences humaines,” 1970) pp. 61–63; English translation by Betty E. Spillman, The Logic of Living Systems (London: Allen Lane, 1974) pp. 50–52. The expression “human species” is a current expression in the eighteenth century. It is frequently found in Voltaire, Rousseau, and d’Holbach. See, for example, George Louis de Buffon (1707–1788), Des époques de la nature (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1778) pp. 187–188: “(…) man is actually the great and final effect of creation. It will be said that the analogy seems to demonstrate that the human species has followed the same steps and that it dates from the same time as the other species, that it is even more universally distributed; and that if the period of its creation is later than that of the animals, nothing proves that man has not at least been subjected to the same laws of nature, the same alterations, and the same changes. We will acknowledge that the human species does not differ fundamentally from other species in its physical faculties, and that in this respect its fate has been more or less the same as that of the other species; but can we doubt that we differ prodigiously from the animals by the sovereign being’s divine light?”
In the new usage of the word “public,” see the fundamental work of J. Habermas, Struktur wandel der Öffentlichkeit (Neuwied-Berlin: H. Luchterhand, 1962) the French translation of which, by M. de Launay, L’Espace public. Archéologie de la publicité comme dimension constitutive de la société bourgeoise appeared in 1978 (Paris: Payot); English translation by Thomas Burger and Patrick Lawrence, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989). Foucault returns at greater length to the question of the public at the end of the lecture of 15 March.
In the light of the phenomenon of population, Foucault puts the three large epistemic domains studied in The Order of Things in a different perspective: the transition from the analysis of wealth to political economy, from natural history to biology, and from general grammar to historical philology, while noting that this is not a “solution,” but a “problem” to be investigated more deeply. For a first “genealogical” summary of these three fields of knowledge, on the basis of the tactical generalization of historical knowledge at the end of the eighteenth century, see, “Il faut défendre la société,” lecture of 3 March 1976, p. 170; “Society must be defended”, p. 190.
See Quesnay’s article, “Hommes,” p. 512: “The condition of the population and the employment of men are (…) the main objects of the economic government of states; for the fertility of the land, the monetary value of products, and the good use of financial wealth are the result of the work and industry of men. Here are the four sources plenty: they mutually contribute to the increase of each other; but it can only be sustained by the operation of the general administration of men, possessions, and products (…).” On economic government, see, for example, Despotisme de la Chine (1767), ch. 8, in F. Quesnay et la physiocratie, vol. 2, p. 923: “The economic government of the cultivation of the land is an example of the general government of the nation”. According to C. Larrère, who quotes this passage in his L’Invention de l’économie au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: PUF, “Léviathan,” 1992), p. 194, it is therefore around government that the unity of doctrine takes shape in which one must be able to find “those laws and conditions that must govern the general administration of the government of society” (Despotisme de la Chine ).See A. Landry, “Les idées de Quesnay,” above, note 18, and below, lecture of 1 February, note 23.
See the texts collected in K. Marx and F. Engels, Critique de Malthus, eds., R. Dangeville and others (Paris: Maspero, 1978); see K. Marx and F. Engels, Marx and Engels on Malthus, ed. R.L. Meek, trans. D.L. Meek and R.L. Meek (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1953).
David Ricardo (1772–1823), British economist and author of On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (London: J. Murray, 1817). From 1809 he formed a friendship with Malthus that did not affect their theoretical disagreements. On the relationship between Malthus and Ricardo, see, Les Mots et les Choses, p. 269; The Order of Things, pp. 256–257: “What makes economics possible, and necessary, then, [for Ricardo] is a perpetual and fundamental situation of scarcity: confronted by a nature that in itself is inert and, save for one very small part, barren, man risks his life. It is no longer in the interplay of representation that economics finds its principle, but near that perilous region where life is in confrontation with death. And thus economics refers us to that order of somewhat ambiguous considerations which may be termed anthropological: it is related, in fact, to the biological properties of a human species, which, as Malthus showed in the same period as Ricardo, tends always to increase unless prevented by some remedy or constraint (…).”
See, Les Mots et les Choses, ch. V: “Classer,” pp. 140–144 (II. L’histoire naturelle) and pp. 150–158 (IV. Le caractère); The Order of Things, ch. 5: “Classifying”: II. Natural history, pp. 128–132, and IV. Character, pp. 138–145.
See ibid. pp. 287–288; trans. ibid. pp. 274–276. The problem Foucault refers to here concerns the respective places that should be attributed to Lamarck and Cuvier in the history of the nascent biology Was Lamarck, with his transformist intuitions “which seem to ‘prefigure’ what was to be evolutionism,” more modern than Cuvier, attached to an “old fixism, impregnated through and through with traditional prejudices and theological postulates” (p. 287; trans. p. 274)? Rejecting the summary opposition, the result of a “whole series of amalgams, metaphors, and inadequately tested analogies” (ibid.), between the “progressive” thought of the former and the “reactionary” thought of the latter, Foucault shows that, paradoxically, “[h]istoricity (…) has now been introduced into nature” (p. 288; trans. p. 276) with Cuvier—as a result of discovery of the discontinuity of living forms, which broke with the ontological continuity still accepted by Lamarck—and that in this way the possibility of evolutionist thought is opened up. A broadly convergent analysis of the problem is presented by F. Jacob in La Logique du vivant, pp. 171–175; The Logic of Living Systems, pp. 156–157, that Foucault praised in a review, “Croître et multiplier,” Le Monde, no. 8037, 15–16 November 1970: Dits et Écrits, 2, pp. 99–104.
See Les Mots et les Choses, ch. VIII: “Travail, vie, langage,” pp. 275–292 (III. Cuvier); The Order of Things, ch. 8: “Labour, life, language”: III. Cuvier, pp. 263–280. See also the lecture given by Foucault at the “Journées Cuvier” at the Institut d’histoire des sciences, in May 1969: “La situation de Cuvier dans l’histoire de la biologie,” Revue d’histoire des sciences et de leurs applications, vol. XXIII (1), January-March 1970, pp. 63–92; Dits et Écrits, 2, pp. 30–36, with discussion pp. 36–66.
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Senellart, M., Ewald, F., Fontana, A. (2009). 25 January 1978. In: Senellart, M., Ewald, F., Fontana, A. (eds) Security, Territory, Population. Michel Foucault. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230245075_3
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