Governmentality is a concept developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault between approximately 1979 and 1984, in the second and third volumes of History of Sexuality. Foucault questioned the nature of the current social order , the conceptualization of power , human freedom and its limits, the possibilities and sources of human action . His best formulation of these issues is in his lesson entitled Governmentality (1978). Foucault sees government as a general technical form that includes everything from self-control to the control of populations.. For Foucault this concept replaces his previous concept of power-knowledge.
Governmentality refers to a specific economy of power. It refers to a society where power is decentralized and where its members play an active role in their own self-government. Due to this active role, individuals need to be regulated from within. Society is based on different institutional spheres ( family , school , prison , ...), and each sphere follows its own logic of government that generates a certain knowledge about the subjects. The knowledge produced allows to govern how individuals will behave in certaincontexts from within the subject, from the subject itself.
The term governmentality - "gouvernementalité" - was originally derived by deriving the word gouvernement with the suffix "al" (adjective), adding "ité" (abstract noun). But of course it is understood as joining goverment with mentality. Government is defined by foucault as an activity that seeks to change and shape our behavior through various techniques, norms, and knowledge. Government is understood as the "leadership of leaders," and thus governance is a phenomenon that is not only close to the state as a whole, but speaks as individuals themselves, and groups shape the governance of themselves and others. Mentality in governmentality suggests that our thinking is immersed in knowledge, opinions, our language, and therefore is often taken for granted. They are the way we think about the authorities, drawing on the expertise, language, theories, ideas, philosophies and other forms of knowledge that are available to us. Moreover, thinking is considered as a group activity and not as an individual activity. And so it is not a matter of the individual mind and conscience, but of the science, faith and opinion in which we are immersed.
