Foucault, Biopolitics, and Liberalism

"With the emergence of political economy, with the introduction of the restrictive principle in governmental practice itself, an important substitution, or doubling rather, is carried out, since the subjects of right on which political sovereignty is exercised appear as a population that a government must manage."

"[p. 32] This is the point of departure for the organizational line of a 'biopolitics.' But who does not see that this is only part of something much larger, which [is] this new governmental reason? Studying liberalism as the general framework of biopolitics."

Michel Foucault, "Footnotes" in The Birth of Biopolitics, ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Picadore, 2008), p. 22