Foucault, still relevant and awesome
What can an internal limitation of governmental rationality be? In the first place, it will be a de facto regulation, a de facto limitation. That is to say, it will not be a legal limitation, although at some point the law will have to transcribe it in the form of rules which must not be infringed. At any rate, to say that it is a de facto limitation means that if the government happens to push aside this limitation and go beyond the bounds laid down for it, it will not thereby be illegitimate, it will not have abandoned its own essence as it were, and it will not be deprived of its basic rights. To say that there is a de facto limitation of governmental practice means that a government that ignores this limitation will not be an illegitimate, usurping government, but simply a clumsy, inadequate government that does not do the proper thing.
From The Birth of Biopolitics. (Thanks, Kavita.)
