The Dark Side of Sovereignty. The Question of Government in a Historical-Epistemological Perspective

This paper aims to question the concept of government in a historical-epistemological perspective. In the first part, I will outline the features and stakes of such questioning, starting with a discussion of conceptual history and the history of governmentality (and their limitations). In the second part, I will seek to sketch out the possible trajectory of such ‘epistemological history’ of the concept of government, showing how – and in what way – it is intertwined with that pivoted on the concepts of sovereignty and representation. To do so, I will focus on two episodes in particular: physiocracy and neoliberalism.