Wrong question if you are reading Foucault's theories as related to a social and political ontology that is multiple. You can (and you may have to) study IL FAUT DEFENDRE LA SOCIETE and SECURITE, TERRITOIRE, POPULATION to find enough evidence to support and consolidate your desired thesis about the absolute importance or necessity of "pastoral power" in the geneology of governmentality expounded by Foucault. Such interpretation cannot build on a direct or a linear link but can only determine that pastoral power is a pre-requisiste for the various historical forms of "governmentality" discussed by Foucault.
Pastoral power cannot be the "foundation" for a particular form of governmentality but it is "diffused" (as a contingency that became necessity) in various regimes, assemblages, dispositifs, episteme, and forms of subjectivization that construct the form of "self" (and the "truth" of such a self) proper to "sovereignty" or "disciplinarity" etc.
While the answer may be evident if phrased differently, and the research question itself is very interesting if allowing for contingencies and multiplicities, it is just difficult not to read your inquiry as analytical (linear, categorical, based on dichotomies, linear causality, and teleology, etc.), deterministic, or even positivistic. I am sure that is not your intent! The Braudelian "Longue Duree" approach applied in Foucault's analyses is never meant to be reductive nor totalizing.
Hope this helps!
Fouad
> Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:12:12 +0200
> From: goran.gaber@xxxxxxxx
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] pastoral power
>
> Hi,
>
> now that I have re-read the question, I admit that it is structured somewhat confusingly...
>
> I understand that the process, in foucauldian terms, cannot be understood as linear and/or deterministic; what I am wondering about is whether the key characteristics of the pastoral modality of power relations constitute somesort of a "pillar" (I apologize for the lack of a better term) on which historically subsequent and specifically political reflections on the "ratio gubernatioria" - partly of course - leaned on, transformed, transplanted, modified and incorporated into its own discourse and practices.
>
> This would in a way, this is my opinion, make the pastoral discourse and practices, sort of a "prerequisite" for the process of structuration of modern governmentality (it is this that I have unfortunately labelled as "evolution")
>
> or
>
> do these two modalities of power relations (pastoral and political) present distinctive and parallel spheres which - throught contingent interaction - now constitute the two (distinct yet connected) poles of the functioning of modern State forms of power relations...
>
>
> I would like grasp this in order to be able to pose the following question: are contemporary modalities of power relations deeply rooted in and conditioned by the pastoral model of government (option 1)?
>
> And with this question I am aiming at the following elements:
> - the constant search of the "inner truth" of the contemporary subject: "am I that name?" / "are you that name?"
> - the incessant balancing within the "economy of merits and faults"
> - the "life-long" guidance to which we are subjected
>
> etc.
>
> This paper is in its preparatory stages and so are the questions/reflections above - hopefully I have clarified more then I have complicated further..
>
> Thanks for your help and best regards, Goran
>
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