Mader

"Foucault’s treatment of race in the “Society Must Be Defended” lectures, it should be noted, is exclusively and explicitly an account of state power and the relation of race to it, rather than a genealogy, history or typology of race and racisms. That is, race is treated only as a part of a genealogy of state power and not as a focus of investigation in itself. Within this broader theoretical context, then, Foucault proposes that the advent of the modern discursive orientation to the notion of life both permits and requires new forms of race and racism as well as new justifications for the exercise of state power. One of the implications of that new, modern orientation to life is that state power enters into relation with the new positive science of biology. On Foucault’s account, this new relation ushers in an era of what he terms ‘biopower,’ in which the particular conjunction of power and knowledge then available operates by way of the various sciences of life, and the new institutional and administrative practices and bodies that employ them. As a part of this new configuration of power and knowledge, a new form of race and racism comes about that depends on the new object of scientific inquiry, life. That is, the science of life permits and requires a specific new form of race and racism. It does so for the reason that the notion of life is first of all the discursive condition for the constitution of a theoretical homogeneity that Foucault terms a ‘biological continuum.’ This biological continuum is itself the condition for the emergence of a form of state power that establishes the legitimacy of its relation to life and death on the basis of a new biological conception of race. Foucault’s central claim about this matter is that after the advent of the biological continuum, if the modern state wishes to kill any of its population with alleged legitimacy, it must resort  to a justification and comprehension of this action in relation to that biological continuum. That is, the modern state must understand its relation to the life and death of its citizens and its population against the background of the scientifically founded homogeneity of the human race or species that is the biological continuum. Foucault argues that one consequence of the modern state’s relation to life and death is the necessity of a racial interruption of the biological continuum that is the human race or species.2 For in the modern era of biological science, the human race or species is conceived of as a vital sameness. On the new understandings of life devised in the life sciences, human beings, as living beings, share in the reality that is life. About the matter of race, here, Foucault’s chief claim with respect to this new vital continuum is that biological racism is a justification required by a state that wishes to put citizens to death, if one of its operating presuppositions is that all of its citizens, as living beings, share in life. Biological race comes about, according to Foucault, as a necessary rationale for putting citizens to death, where state power takes life as that phenomenon in which it can intervene and whose forces it ought to maximize. It will be important, however, to grasp more clearly the specific sense of ‘life’ that Foucault identifies with its modern science. For the moment, we can note that biological race and racisms are essentially forms of race and racism that concern the notion of life and its attendant notions; they thus could be said to be a ‘vital race’ and ‘vital racisms.’ With respect to state killing, then, it will be a biological racism that allows a ‘biological relation’—rather than a military one—to be instituted between citizens fit for death and citizens fit for life. Controversially, it is within the larger context of these specifically biological racisms, which are typological, genealogical and potentially pathological or non-pathological, that Foucault situates ethnic racisms''. 

"A crucial blind spot in contemporary academic philosophy exists on the topic of human generative relations, and of what could be termed “genealogical being.” In the field of philosophy, there is no substantial, central, and current discussion of the existential sense and import of the realities of generating and continuing humankind, of being generated, or of the multiple contributions to the continuation of humankind that people indeed make. With the exception of some important work in philosophical ethics, being existentially dependent upon others— of all sorts—for one’s origin and for one’s cultivation seems for philosophers today to contain no material worth philosophical reflection—no pressing issues of temporality or ontology, and no tough problems of understanding cultural forms and symbolization. By the phrase “human generative relations,” I do not mean reproductive, genetic or nominal kin relations per se, although these may be elements of human generative relations. In fact, the matter of what we might want to count as human generative relations should itself be a philosophical question. This is far from an easy or simple question to answer, and replies to it would concomitantly map the range of positions that have been set out in contemporary response to the recurrent instances of reductive, failed and distorting evolutionary accounts of a particularly narrow vision of human generative relations. For such reductionist and misguided attempts at a global explanation of generative relations between human beings recur today, in much of evolutionary psychology, Darwinian psychiatry and other research programs, repeating the errors of past eugenicist and social Darwinist thought. They supply a vision of human generative relations as essentially biological that fails entirely to address the existential reality of our thought and unthought generation and cultivation of other human beings''.

"Foucault argues that one consequence of the modern state’s relation to life and death is the necessity of a racial interruption of the biological continuum that is the human race or species.2 For in the modern era of biological science, the human race or species is conceived of as a vital sameness. On the new understandings of life devised in the life sciences, human beings, as living beings, share in the reality that is life. About the matter of race, here, Foucault’s chief claim with respect to this new vital continuum is that biological racism is a justification required by a state that wishes to put citizens to death, if one of its operating presuppositions is that all of its citizens, as living beings, share in life''. 

"A specifically positive philosophical approach to these topics that might avoid these flaws requires the comprehensive reworking of most, if not all, of the prevailing philosophical concepts employed for the understanding of human generative relations. Accounts of human generative relations that are reductionist and essentially theological, although putatively objective, must be overcome, and philosophy is late to this project. This essay is an initial effort to approach the task of a philosophical ontology of genealogy that might contribute to a philosophy of human generative relations. Here, that task was approached through the work of Michel Foucault on the subject of the modern science of life, and via his sketched speculations on the topic of race in modernity. Both of these topics bear centrally upon the matter of human generative relations. The essay sought to demonstrate Foucault’s positions on the various kinds of discursive continuities that he identifies. His view is that these have grounded our conceptions of the being of natural beings, the lives of living forms, as well as the modern state’s supposed rationale for deploying racial classification of populations as subspecies of the human species. The task of devising a positive philosophy of human generative relations is one for which Foucault’s sensitivities can be useful, even if his speculations have their limits. Thinking about the ontology of genealogy requires an engagement with the existential import of evolutionary, as well as theological, thinking in the contemporary scene of philosophy and culture. Prior to that, it requires thorough conceptual reinvention in response to the ontological and temporal puzzles that continue to present themselves to us as ourselves—as ourselves being genealogical''.

Mary Beth Mader