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January 18, 2005
One interpretation of Foucault's governmentality is the following one advanced by Ali Rizvi over at Foucauldian Reflections.
Working off Foucault's essay 'The Subject and Power',(an afterward to Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics), Ali says:
"This power of the capitalist state is based on the emergence of a new type of power: bio power and disciplinary power. A new type of state has emerged in the west because the "western state has integrated in a new political shape, an old power technique which originated in Christian institutions. We can call this power technique the pastoral power" [p.213] Bio and disciplinary power is a modern reinterpretation of Christian pastoral power (ibid. p. 214). This reinterpretation has been made possible due to 'profound transformation' in the basic mode of power. Power does not any longer work primarily as negativity, as a deduction. It takes the form of positivity..."
Ali says that modern reinterpretation of Christian pastoral power is salvation oriented but its conception of salvation aims at ensuring salvation in this world (eg., welfarism). This secularized pastoral techniques are incorporated into the mechanisms of the modern capitalist state, and so the state "stretches its reach to the soul and body of individuals on the one hand and to the social body at large on the other hand."
Ali says that:
"By 'bio-power' Foucault wanted to emphasis the form of power which does not only cater for the needs of the individuals but also looks after 'population' as a whole. On the other hand 'discipline' is what is concerned with individual in his specificity and concreteness. What links these two forms of power is the phenomenon of body. While the 'bio power' is 'focused' on the 'species body' the disciplines are 'centered on body as machine.'"
Ali does not mention citizenship in his account. Yet it should be since the capitalist state is a liberal democratic one and the individual is a citizen. If we make this shift then it can be argued that democracy is a disciplining force. The argument is that political institutions construct the identities of subjects as citizens, who then willingly support and participate in democratic processes.
Hence democracy is a form of governmentality that constitutes subjects as democratic citizens to make them amenable to government control within a liberal constitutional order.
Why so?
Because democracy is based on a set of power relations and so we are tangled up in power and knowledge relations that both constrain and enable the possibilities of citizenship.
One can illustrate this in terms of deliberative democracy. In this understanding of democracy reasoned discourse or debate is based on a particular kind of conversation or communication: dispassionate, reasoned and logical. The problem with this is that white middle class male citizens are better than others at articulating their arguments in rational and reasonable terms. Those who cannot do this are excluded. The liberal justification for this austere style is that rhetoric needs to be purged from deliberation to keep the door closed to demagogues, manipulators, deceivers and flatters.
Hence we have the process of constraining the possibilities of citizenship.
The reaction from the right wing of the blogosphere to this liberal demand about deliberation has been an oppositional one. The resistance is described by August Pollack:
"....What matters- the only thing that matters- is that they said something they think was really clever on the comments section of some person they've likely never met.....The right-wing blogosphere has removed itself from any realm of rational discourse and instead established only one principle: win the argument. It doesn't even matter to them what the fucking argument is. If some liberal said something, they're either a hypocrite, a liar, or a traitor. Don't worry, you'll make some shit up to validate that a little later...History will never look back on this time and discuss how changes were made through the art of rational bipartisan discussion."
We have an assertive type of conservative discourse that affirms its difference to the elitist liberal ethos of disspasionate and disembodied writing through confrontation. The alternative form of communication is rhetoric involving jokes, anger, laughter, ridicule flattery and hyperbole.
Though the world of journalism and politics in Australia has yet to be transformed by blogging rhetoric is the favoured discourse of the conservative journalists in the Murdoch press.
This shows that we are both subjected to power and subjects in our own right. So we can about strategies for governing through citizenship.
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