Gobernar la vida

This article forms part of the tributes to Michel Foucault’s legacy in 2024, the 40th anniversary of his death, acknowledging Foucault’s enduring influence on the fields of Social Sciences and Social Studies over the past five decades. This text focuses on two of his most resonant and widely used concepts and seeks to achieve a level of conceptual rigor that is often missing in contemporary Social Studies while bucking the trend of neglecting epistemological domains in theoretical and interdisciplinary constructions. The article explores the categories of biopolitics and governmentality, both of which are widely used in a range of interpretative and research frameworks, a situation that can lead to their conceptual fetishization. Rather than asserting absolute truths about these categories, the authors seek to situate them both conceptually and historically, engaging in informed and reflexive dialogues that recognize their complexity in the context of Foucauldian analytics. Finally, the article argues for dialogues that preserve epistemological definitions, generate a discursive order that respects the richness of Foucauldian categories and incorporate a critical ontology approach that seeks to deepen their meaning and relevance in contemporary discourse.