Moreover, “[r]elations of power are not in a position of exteriority with respect to other types of relationships (economic processes, knowledge rela­tionships, sexual relations), but are immanent in the latter.” Such claims played some role in the rise of a mode of analysis that vastly expands the range of what can be treated as political.

Disciplinary societies, which he saw as reaching their initial apogee in the nineteenth century, established formal rights through the legal system, but simultaneously disciplined their subjects by way of the “spaces of enclosure” they occupied at every stage of life: family, school, factory, army, and so on. The systematic surveillance and regulation of behavior imposed within these spaces constituted the “the other, dark side” of modern freedom. In Foucault’s words, “[t]he real, corporeal disciplines constituted the foundation of the formal, juridical liberties.” The expansion of de jure freedom, that is, was accompanied by a variety of new de facto institutional constraints.

From the standpoint offered by his work, deferring to “science” for political decisions does not merely imply putting the best-informed individuals in charge. On the contrary, it means drastically reconfiguring the exercise of power. During the pandemic, the delega­tion of decisions to public health experts has entailed a dramatic expansion of state authority and abrogation of basic rights, most notably freedom of speech and assembly. A range of needs and values that might contravene the prevention of infection were sidelined at the behest of unelected health officials. None of this is to say there is no reasonable argument for such an approach. The problem is that this mode of politics is an attempt to circumvent reasoned argument altogether.