During his lessons held at the College de France in 1976 Michel Foucault presents a genealogy of two types of narratives, concerning respectively war and race theory, considered in their historical development from the XVIth Century. Foucault's work Il faut defendre la societe outlines a specific model for the function of race theory, seen as a technique of normalization of diversity, and no longer as an "exceptional event" produced by the "totalitarian" narratives which arose in the XXth Century. This paper aims to stress the actuality of Foucault's position, trying to show how the concept of bio-power, already at work in these lessons, deserves an active and productive role in analysis of contemporary "democratic" societies, because of the structure of their internal cohesion, based on strategies developing "inclusion"/"exclusion" dynamics.
