Ingles From "the Nietzsche hypothesis" to the concept of governmentality. Theoretical changes in the work of Michel Foucault

Abstract

Michel Foucault developed the notions of government and governmentality in the second half of the 1970s to clarify some of the problems that his treatment of power had given rise to. This text explains the theoretical reasons that led the French to formulate these notions, moving from a series of conceptual choices that the author himself identified with the name of “Nietzsche hypothesis”. Throughout the writing, an attempt is made to show that the categories of government and governmentality allow us to better explain the social practices of asymmetry and domination in our societies than the first notion of power developed by Foucault. The text focuses on the work of the French in the 1970s and accentuates the disruptive character of the article entitled The subject and power.