Race Before Race: The Flock and the Wolf

Chapter 1 argues that it was the medieval Roman Church’s pastoral “government of souls,” its management of the flock of Christendom through a regime of instruction, inspection, confession, and interrogation, that provided the governmental tool kit through which “race” would eventually be assembled. Medieval pastoral power was not pacific, as Foucault implies, but grounded in bellicosity. In the “war on heresy,” shepherds were needed to protect the flock against wolves and foxes. Gradually, Jewish and Muslim infidelity also came to represent spiritual threat. “The flock” was a key metaphor for church governance that underscored the politico-theological threat of evil’s power to seduce Christians and rob them of Christ’s promise of eternal life. Even though it operated at a historical moment before race, medieval pastoral power evinced a dialectic of body and soul, conducted through a game of concealment and exposure, that looked ahead to the biopolitics of racial power.