Thinking about the government: making politics of life and of extermination

Abstract

In this article we discuss the conceptions of government in Michel Foucault’s and Giogio Agamben’s work, from the epistemological field of Psychology. Our proposal is a theoretical debate which problematizes the similitude and the difference between both authors, mainly at the biopolitics and government issues. From this discussion, we conclude that life and death become objects of government, and that, due to this, all politics becomes a sort of object of biology as well. Thus, talking about public policies is to talk about how the population must be governed, previously planned or calculated. Therefore, to problematize, to discuss and to analyze what are public policies, to what and to whom they are directed, leads us to the question, ultimately, about the problem of government and of biopolitics which in turn, manage ways of living and of dying.