Pastoral Power, Sovereign Carelessness, and the Social Divisions of Care Work or: What Foucault Can Teach Us about the “Crisis of Care”

Abstract

Contemporary thinkers studying biopolitics find little interest in Foucault's "vague sketch of the pastorate”. Described by Foucault as an inherently “benevolent” “power of care”, the concept seems inadequate to describe the deadly forms of carelessness that characterize the current government of life. Sovereign power, as a power of decision over life and death that works by distinguishing populations whose lives are worth affirming from social groups whose lives are not, therefore takes precedence in the examination of the governmental connection between care, violence, and biopolitics. Yet, what we might call the “sovereign turn” in the field of Foucault studies is not without a significant drawback. The focus on the logic of exclusion through which governments “care about” specific groups and “take care of” them, while actively producing subjects that cannot or must not be cared for, often overshadows the analysis of how care is currently given and received. More often than not, the post-Foucauldian critique of governmental concern for life neglects the long-standing feminist critique of how support for life, in the form of care work, has historically been organized along lines of gender, race, and class. In contrast, this article argues that delving into the relationship between pastoral power and governmentality enables the development of a framework that encompass both these critiques, shedding new light on the mechanisms at play in the current “crisis of care”.