토마스 모어의 『유토피아』에 나타난 사목 권력과 통치성 : 미셸 푸코의 철학과 비교연구

Abstract

The primary purpose of this essay is to analyze Thomas More’s Utopia in terms of biopolitics and governmentality that Michel Foucault theorized in his lectures at College de France. More’s story of an imaginary commonwealth is an illustration of early modern pastoral power that foreshadows the rise of (early) modern “governmentality.” Pastoral power as a sort of governing technology claimed that people should be governed just as Christ as an ideal pastor governs his flock (Christian subjects), and its economic ideology is the core of what St. Paul called oikonomia. Yet this religious governmentality began to be secularized from the sixteenth century and formed secular governmental rationality, and I would argue that More’s Utopia is a discussion of this governing technology developed from this pastoral power. This essay, in this light, has a dual purpose. First this article surveys and analyzes pastoralism and governmentality that operate as biopower in More’s work. Utopia has been read as a discussion of ideal state and a society based on proto-communism, but seen from a different angle it is a representation of Renaissance England’s governmentality. Nonetheless, a more important project of this essay is to critically anatomize the paradox of Foucault’s notion of biopolitics by surveying Utopia from a biopolitical perspective. Foucault was not able to properly answer why a power that “make[s] live and let[s] die” uncannily transforms into thanato-political and sovereign power that “take[s] life or let[s] live.” Reading More’s discussion of an ideal commonwealth allows us to grasp that a society aiming at utmost security based on biopolitics uncannily transforms into an extremely controlled society ruled by thanato-politics.