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A Foucauldian Defense of the State: Blandine Kriegel and the État de Droit
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 November 2021
Abstract
This paper examines the career and thought of French political philosopher Blandine Kriegel (b. 1943) from the standpoint of the most striking paradox they present: though she was a student of Michel Foucault, who was famous for his critique of central role that political thinking has traditionally accorded the state, Kriegel has, since the mid-1970s, been one of the foremost champions of the concept of état de droit—the state as the embodiment of the “rule of law”—in French political debates. At a time when post-1968 critics of Marxism and totalitarianism (notably the so-called nouveaux philosophes) were arguing that states were inherently despotic, Kriegel mounted an original defense of the state, which, she argued, had played a central role in establishing legal rights that freed individuals from the “slavery” of civil society. She was able to do this, in part, by drawing on several suggestive elements found in Foucault's work: his concept of biopolitics, the claim that individuals and subjectivity are constituted through power relations, and the insight that war and sovereignty represent alternative ways of conceptualizing power. In this way, she used aspects of Foucault's political thought to arrive at a decidedly non-Foucauldian appreciation of the modern state.
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References
1 Foucault, Michel, Naissance de la biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France, 1978–1979 (Paris, 2004), 78.Google Scholar
2 Among many possible examples, consider what Quentin Skinner says about Jean Bodin: “With this analysis of the state as an omnipotent yet impersonal power, we may be said to enter the modern world.” Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2, The Age of Reformation (Cambridge, 1978), 358.
3 The quotations in this paragraph are from Foucault, La volonté de savoir (Paris, 1976), 107–20.
4 Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique, 79.
5 Blandine Barret-Kriegel, L’État et les esclaves: Réflexion pour l'histoire des états (Paris, 1989; first published 1979), 288 n. 4. For most of Kriegel's writings before the mid-1980s she went by “Barret-Kriegel.” For clarity's sake, I refer to her in all subsequent notes simply as “Kriegel,” even when “Barret-Kriegel” is used in the original.
6 Kriegel, “Michel Foucault et l’État de police,” in Michel Foucault philosophe: Rencontre internationale, Paris 9, 10, 11 janvier 1988 (Paris, 1989), 222–9, at 222.
7 Blandine Kriegel (with Alexis Lacroix) Querelles françaises (Paris, 2008), 67.
8 “Mort du résistance Maurice Kriegel,” Le nouvel observateur, online edn, 3 Aug. 2006, at www.nouvelobs.com/societe/20060803.OBS7208/mort-du-resistant-maurice-kriegel-valrimont.html. Kriegel discusses her father in Querelles françaises, 67–70. See, too, Maurice Kriegel-Valrimont, Mémoires rebelles (with Olivier Buffaud) (Paris, 1999).
9 Annie Kriegel, Aux origines du communisme français, 1914–1920: Contribution à l'histoire du mouvement ouvrier, 2 vols. (Paris, 1964).
10 Marc Lazar, “Annie Kriegel, rigueur et passion,” Le monde, 29 Aug. 1995. See, too, Annie Kriegel's memoirs, Ce que j'ai cru comprendre (Paris, 1991).
11 Alexandre Adler, “Préface,” in Kriegel, Querelles françaises, 11–59, at 12.
12 Christophe Bourseiller, Les Maoïstes: La folle histoire des gardes rouges français (Paris, 1996), 57.
13 On the evolution of the Cercle d'Ulm see Frédéric Chateigner, “D'Althusser à Mao: Les Cahiers marxistes-léninistes,” Dissidences: Bulletin de liaison et d’étude des mouvements révolutionnaires 8 (2010), 66–80.
14 See Virginie Linhart, Volontaires pour l'usine: Vies d’établis, 1967–1977 (Paris, 1994), 23–43; Bourseiller, Les Maoïstes; Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman, Génération, vol. 1, Les années de rêve (Paris, 1987), 255–366; Richard Wolin, The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton, 2010).
15 Mao Zedong's 1941 party directive, quoted in Reid, Donald, “Etablissement: Working in the Factory to Make Revolution in France,” Radical History Review 88 (2004), 83–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 85.
16 Barret, Philippe, “Signification de l’établissement,” Politique aujourd'hui 5–6 (1978), 31–6Google Scholar, at 34. An anecdote from the time recounts that the Maoist leader Benny Lévy discouraged Barret from marrying Kriegel because she was a philosopher and an “intellectual” (despite her revolutionary pedigree). Barret disregarded the advice.
17 Quoted in Reid, “Etablissement,” 86.
18 Kriegel, “Préface à l’édition de 1989,” in Kriegel, L’État et les esclaves, 9–21, at 10.
19 Adler, “Préface,” 20.
20 Kriegel, “Préface à l’édition de 1989,” 12.
21 Kriegel, Blandine, “Histoire et politique, ou l'histoire, science des effets,” Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations 6/28 (1973), 1437–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 1448.
22 Ibid., 1438.
23 Ibid.
24 Michel Foucault, Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma sœur et mon frère …: Un cas de parricide au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1973).
25 Bruno Fortier, ed., La politique de l'espace urbain (à la fin de l'Ancien régime) (Paris, 1975).
26 Michel Foucault, Blandine Barret Kriegel, Anne Thalamy, François Beguin, and Bruno Fortier, eds., Les machines à guérir: Aux origines de l'hôpital moderne (Liège and Brussels, 1979; originally published Paris, 1976).
27 Blandine Kriegel, L'histoire à l’âge classique, 4 vols (Paris, 1996; first published 1988). The volume that deals most directly with the monarchical state is vol. 4, La république incertaine.
28 Blandine Kriegel, “La politique de recherche historique de la monarchie aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” in Kriegel, Les chemins de l’État (Paris, 1986), 149–85, at 151. Kriegel dates this text from 1975.
29 Blandine Kriegel, “L'hôpital comme équipement,” in Kriegel, Les machines à guérir, 19–30, at 25, 26.
30 Blandine Kriegel, “Instances politiques et séquences de la médicalisation de l'espace urbain,” in Kriegel, La politique de l'espace urbain, 153–90, at 156.
31 Ibid., 165.
32 Ibid., 175.
33 Michael Scott Christofferson, French Intellectuals against the Left: The Anti-totalitarian Moment of the 1970s (New York, 2004).
34 André Glucksmann, La cuisinière et le mangeur d'hommes: Essai sur l’État, le marxisme, et les camps de concentration (Paris, 1975), 28. In fact, this statement is a mistranslation of Lenin, who in fact said, “We know that an unskilled laborer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration.” Lenin, “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” in Lenin, Selected Works (Moscow, 1977), 359–97, at 378.
35 Ibid., 84.
36 Ibid., 101–13.
37 Ibid., 112, 109.
38 Christofferson, French Intellectuals against the Left, 198. See, too, Dews, Peter, “The Nouvelle Philosophie and Foucault,” Economy and Society 2/8 (1979), 127–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Michel Foucault, “De la nature humaine: Justice contre pouvoir” (discussion with Noam Chomsky and F. Elders), in Foucault, Dits et écrits, vol. 2, 1970–1975, ed. Daniel Defert, François Ewald, and Jacques Lagrange (Paris, 1994), 471–512, at 495–6.
40 Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris, 1975), 31.
41 Ibid.
42 Ewald, François, “Anatomie et corps politique,” Critique 343 (1975), 1228–65Google Scholar, at 1249.
43 On the meaning of Foucault's critique of “state phobia,” see my essay “A Liberal despite Himself: Reflections on a Debate, Reappraisals of a Question,” in Stephen W. Sawyer and Daniel Steinmetz Jenkins, eds., Foucault, Neoliberalism and Beyond (London, 2019), 1–33, at 26.
44 Pierre Clastres, La société contre l’État (Paris, 1974).
45 Pierre Rosanvallon, L’âge de l'autogestion, ou la politique au poste du commandement (Paris, 1976), 48.
46 Nicos Poulantzas, “Les transformations actuelles de l’État, la crise politique et la crise de l’État,” in Poulantzas, ed., La crise de l’État (Paris, 1976), 19–58, at 50.
47 Antonio Negri, “Sur quelques tendances de la théorie communiste de l’État la plus récente: Revue critique,” in Association pour la critique des sciences économiques et sociales, Sur l’État: Colloque de Nice, 8–9–10 septembre 1976 (Brussels, 1977), 375–427, esp. 419.
48 Though a Socialist–Communist coalition was expected to win parliamentary elections in 1978, conservative parties supporting President Giscard d'Estaing nonetheless prevailed.
49 Blandine Kriegel, “Echapper à la dérive concentrationnaire,” Esprit, Oct. 1977, 102. Similar interventions by Kriegel from this time include “L'intellectuel et l’état,” L'Arc 70 (1977), 57–64; an exchange with Pierre Rosanvallon and Patrick Viveret in Faire 27 (1978), 50–56; and an exchange with Daniel Lindenberg, Madeleine Rebérioux, Jacques Julliard, and Paul Noirot called “Les intellectuels et le pouvoir,” Politique hebdo 1–2 (1978), 42–56.
50 Kriegel, “Echapper à la dérive concentrationnaire,” 101.
51 Michel Foucault, “La naissance de la médicine sociale,” in Foucault, Dits et écrits, vol. 3, 1976–1979 (Paris, 1994), 207–28, at, 210.
52 Foucault, “Il faut défendre la société”: Cours au Collège de France, 1975–1976 (Paris, 1997), 214. This lecture is in many respects a rough draft of the final chapter of La volonté de savoir, 177–211.
53 Kriegel, L’État et les esclaves, 45.
54 Kriegel has in mind Perry Anderson's arguments in Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974).
55 Kriegel, L’État et les esclaves, 53.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., 54.
58 Ibid., 64.
59 Ibid., 59.
60 Ibid., 281.
61 This idea is also found in the work of Kriegel's teacher Louis Althusser, though Kriegel makes no reference to his version of the argument, notably his concept of “interpellation.”
62 Foucault, Surveiller et punir, 195–6.
63 Ibid., 34.
64 Kriegel, L’État et les esclaves, 75, original emphasis.
65 Ibid., 103.
66 Ibid., 88.
67 Ibid., 86.
68 Ibid., 93.
69 Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, La pensée 68: Essai sur l'anti-humanisme contemporain (Paris, 1985).
70 Blandine Kriegel, “Préface à l’édition de 1989,” 16, original emphasis.
71 Ibid., 18. Kriegel uses precisely the same words in her contribution to the 1988 Foucault conference. See Kriegel, “Michel Foucault et l’État de police,” 227.
72 Kriegel, “Michel Foucault et l’État de police,” 227.
73 Blandine Kriegel, Michel Foucault aujourd'hui (Paris, 2004), 92–3, original emphasis.
74 Kriegel's most important and complete presentation of these ideas is found in “Les droits de l'homme et le droit naturel,” in Dominique Colas and Claude Emeri, eds., Droits, institutions et systèmes politiques: Mélanges offerts à Maurice Duverger (Paris, 1987), 3–42.
75 Kriegel, Michel Foucault aujourd'hui, 80–81.
76 Foucault, “Il faut défendre la société”, 18.
77 Ibid., 51.
78 Ibid., 150.
79 Kriegel, L’État et les esclaves, 67. During the Middle Ages, pré carré referred to a lord's personal domain. The term was popularized by Vauban, Louis XIV's chief military engineer, who used it to refer to the extensive fortifications he built along France's northeastern border.
80 Ibid., 186.
81 Ibid., 70.
82 Kriegel, L'histoire à l’âge classique, vol. 1, Jean Mabillon: 19.
83 Kriegel, L’État et les esclaves, 41.
84 Kriegel, Querelles françaises, 134. Foucault, admittedly, did not always follow his own method. Is it interesting, though, that one of the works in which he reverts to a familiar form of intellectual history is the lecture course that Kriegel claims to have influenced—the 1976 lectures, “Il faut défendre la société”. Even here, though, Foucault's interest in the theory and history of the French state's origin in civil war was tied to strategies for legitimating and delegitimating the state.
85 Michel Foucault, “Prisons et asiles dans le mécanisme du pouvoir,” in Foucault, Dits et écrits, 2: 523.
86 This and other aspects of Ewald's career are discussed in my essay “Accidents Happen: François Ewald, the Anti-revolutionary Foucault, and the Intellectual Politics of the French Welfare State,” Journal of Modern History 3/82 (2010), 585–624.
87 Kriegel, Blandine, La violence à la télévision: Rapport de Madame Blandine Kriegel à Monsieur Jean-Jacques Aillagon, Ministère de la culture et de la communication (Paris, 2002)Google Scholar.
88 Kriegel, Michel Foucault aujourd'hui, 97.
89 I am grateful to an anonymous reader for Modern Intellectual History for pointing out the shortcomings of Kriegel's thesis. For an important critique of common assumptions about the contrast between “free labor” in Western Europe and serfdom in Eastern Europe see Staziani, Alessandro, Bondage: Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries (New York, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
90 Foucault, Surveiller et punir, 52.
91 Ibid., 83.