Pastoral power
According to Michel Foucault, pastoral power is a particularly Christian-religious power technique that goes hand in hand with tracking down an “inner truth” - for example through techniques of verbalization ( discursivation ), as in Christian confession . The function of pastoral power consists in the promotion of subjectification ( subjectification ). This process leads to a submission ("subjectivation" from Latin sub-iacere) of the individual to social conditions, as Louis Althusser , one of Foucault's teachers, had already described. In the course of the development of capitalist-bourgeois society , pastoral power was secularized and, according to Foucault, plays an important role in maintaining and reproducing social relationships.
This power technique is based on the concept of a “government of souls”, as found in the metaphor of the relationship between the shepherd (Latin: pastor ) and the flock.
Foucault values the difference to ancient techniques of self-care. While in antiquity the master, the pedagogue , led to the truth , in Christianity the individual could only discover the truth within himself: “ Christianity decouples psychagogics from pedagogy and requires the psychagogized and guided soul to tell a truth which only she can say, which only she possesses, and which is not the only one, but one of the fundamental elements of that operation through which its way of being will be changed; and that is exactly what the Christian confession consists of. "
Michel Foucault wanted to close his book series "Sexuality and Truth" (1975/1984) with a volume on "Formation of the doctrine and pastoral care of the flesh". Pastoral power is dealt with centrally here. However, this fourth volume ( "The Confessions of the Flesh" ) was only recently published posthumously.
Pastoral power in historical development
With the emphasis on the principle of knowing yourself , according to Foucault, the rise of Christianity to a sovereign religion became possible. The ancient form of self-culture, expressed in the claim to care for oneself ('self-care'), faded into the background.
In the Christian Middle Ages, subjectification techniques took the form of direction and control.
Pastoral power was at the beginning of the 19th century in the wake of billets taken (prisons, military barracks, schools, factories) by non-ecclesiastical institutions, especially in the wake of the emergence of the human sciences "secularized", especially of psychology and psychoanalysis and changed the course of the 20th century to a new configuration of power, which Foucault calls " biopower ". “ In a sense, the modern state can be seen as an individualization matrix or a new form of pastoral power. “The modern, secularizing state functions with the help of the pastoral idea as “ an intricate combination of individualization techniques ” .
With the transformation of government goals, extremely heterogeneous government arts developed, which in neoliberal governmentality put the individual interest in line with the state interest. This abolishes the dichotomous separation between the state and the individual in favor of the 'citizen capable of civil society '. He is the shepherd of himself - that is, accountable to himself and responsible for achieving his individually set goals and satisfaction. He is also socially integrated by addressing and invoking an individual concern. To recognize oneself as a political subject, to participate in social processes and to take responsibility not only for the individual well-being, but also for the social order , is part of the political order of neoliberalism , which is based on the disintegration of the integrative capacity of the traditional capitalist economy - and the social system answers. At the same time, in neoliberal governmentality, the will to govern has not become obsolete; rather, the subject itself is the object of governance, but now in such a way that it makes itself the object and means of government practice: the interest as the consciousness of every single individual, the with the rest of the population forms the population, and the interests of the population - whatever the individual interests and aspirations of those of which they are composed - are the target and the main instrument of government of the people.
reception
Pastoral power is a central concept in Hans-Joachim Sander's theology .
See also
literature
- Michel Foucault: Concern for yourself. Sexuality and Truth 3. Frankfurt am Main 1989
- Michel Foucault: The Subject and Power. In: Hubert L. Dreyfus / Paul Rabinow: Michel Foucault. Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 243-261.
- Michel Foucault: Hermeneutics of the Subject. Lecture at the Collège de France (1982). Postscript and translation by Helmut Becker in collaboration with Lothar Wolfstetter. In: Michel Foucault: Freedom and self-care. Interview 1984 and lecture 1982. Frankfurt a. M. 1985, ISBN 3-88535-102-1
- Hermann Steinkamp : Pastoral care as incitement to self-care. Lit-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 978-3825875527
- Torsten Junge: Self-management as post-pastoral power. In: Malte-Christian Gruber, Sascha Ziemann (Ed.): The uncertainty of the father. On the formation of paternal ties , Berlin 2009, pp. 305ff., ISBN 978-3-89626-8860 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas Lemke: Governmentality (PDF file; 130 kB)
- ↑ Michel Foucault: Hermeneutics of the Subject , p. 60.
- ↑ Michel Foucault: The use of lusts. Sexuality and Truth Volume 2 , p. 20.
- ↑ Michel Foucault: Sexuality and Truth. Fourth volume. The Confessions of the Flesh, ed. by Frédéric Gros, Verlag Suhrkamp, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-518-58733-1 .
- ↑ Torsten Junge: Self-management as post-pastoral power, In: Malte-Christian Gruber, Sascha Ziemann (ed.), The uncertainty of the father. On the formation of paternal ties , Berlin 2009, pp. 305ff.
- ↑ a b Michel Foucault: The subject and power , p. 249.
- ↑ Michel Foucault: History of Governmentality , p. 158f.
- ↑ See e.g. B. https://www.feinschwarz.net/coronakrise-und-pastoralmacht-kirche/
Web links
- Thomas Lemke: Governmentality (PDF; 130 kB)