Les processus de civilisation et l’action sociale : Subjectivité et gouvernementalité chez Michel Foucault et Norbert Elias

The power analytics developed by Michel Foucault aims at dissolving the idea of a centralized state that operates top down. In a similar vein, Norbert Elias develops the idea of the interiorization of social constraints as a pre-condition of the construction of subjectivity. This contribution will compare Elias ’ processes of civilization and Michel Foucault ’ s genealogical theory in order to expound on the status of subjectivity and governmentality in modern nation-states. First, we will analyze the denaturalization of the alleged autonomous subject in Les Mots et les choses (Foucault) and Engagement und Distanzierung (Elias). Secondly, the relation between sociogenesis and psychogenesis will be closely scrutinized through a detailed reading of Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation (Elias) and Surveiller et punir (Foucault). This contribution will thus show how the construction of the individual subject – the psychogenesis – is the vectorial effect of processes of subjection, of sociogenesis.