The king's head - Right, discipline and government in Foucault

In the social sciences and philosophy Foucault is still regarded as a think er who in his last works abandoned the genealogy of power in favor of a the ory of the subject. On the basis of a comprehensive reconstruction of the F oucaultian problematics of power this article sets out to present a better account of the theoretical shift in question. It argues that the concentrat ion on discipline in the context of a,;microphysics of power" leads to theo retical problems that seriously limit Foucault's analysis, especially the a ccount of subjectivity and the state. In the late 70s Foucault introduces t he notion of government to actively address these problems. By expanding hi s conception of the state and subjectivity in a perspective that permits to pose the question of their precise relationship, Foucault's later work doe s not represent a discontinuity but an elaboration and extension of the pro blematics of power.