Sorry to be picking up on something that has passed by, but have been
out of action.
In reply to M.A.King, I don't think at all that neo-liberal governments
govern by not governming. Quite the contrary. They are most active in
government. but the appeararance of non-government is essential to their
project. If you think of government as something more than the 'system'
- as indeed 'dispositif' then the apparatus of govt in neo-liberal govt
includes business and the reconstruction of the subject as well - hardly
not governing.
I also want to go back to some quotes from a way back .
I remember that foucault says that revolutions happen by replacing the
head - that the system continues to function but with a different
motivating power - and in thinking of the establishment of apartheid in
South africa, yes that is how it worked - until the Broederbond came up
against the Judiciary, which was still constructed in the knowledge of a
different kind of justice and righteousness - and the resistance,
definitely there a subjugated knowledge, most horribly subjugated - was
able to call on its own geneology as it were in the form of world-wide
notions of freedom and liberality, as well as the forms of justice
enshrined in law, distinct from statute law, which the govt had got hold
of.
And yet this way of thinking about power seems somehow contradictory to
what he says elsewhere about power being implicit in networks and
individuals and institutions. It lends itself to conspiracy theory - and
yet, in the case of the Broederbund it is hard to disparage the
conspiracy theory. and of course I am only using the Bund here as an
example which is readily understood. The MT Pelerin Society, or the FBI
at certain times, the IRA, the Church - what are these except good
conspiracies? i have been working on the notion that these things cannot
work unless the ground is prepared, on the 'conditions of possibility' -
but again there is the possibility that I reconstruct history to fit
foucault, which was not his way of working! Perhaps there is no escape
from the endless accumulation of detail in time and place. The urge to
impose order, i.e. a grand theory, on the otherwise incomprehensible
accumulation of detail seems inescapable.
nesta
out of action.
In reply to M.A.King, I don't think at all that neo-liberal governments
govern by not governming. Quite the contrary. They are most active in
government. but the appeararance of non-government is essential to their
project. If you think of government as something more than the 'system'
- as indeed 'dispositif' then the apparatus of govt in neo-liberal govt
includes business and the reconstruction of the subject as well - hardly
not governing.
I also want to go back to some quotes from a way back .
I remember that foucault says that revolutions happen by replacing the
head - that the system continues to function but with a different
motivating power - and in thinking of the establishment of apartheid in
South africa, yes that is how it worked - until the Broederbond came up
against the Judiciary, which was still constructed in the knowledge of a
different kind of justice and righteousness - and the resistance,
definitely there a subjugated knowledge, most horribly subjugated - was
able to call on its own geneology as it were in the form of world-wide
notions of freedom and liberality, as well as the forms of justice
enshrined in law, distinct from statute law, which the govt had got hold
of.
And yet this way of thinking about power seems somehow contradictory to
what he says elsewhere about power being implicit in networks and
individuals and institutions. It lends itself to conspiracy theory - and
yet, in the case of the Broederbund it is hard to disparage the
conspiracy theory. and of course I am only using the Bund here as an
example which is readily understood. The MT Pelerin Society, or the FBI
at certain times, the IRA, the Church - what are these except good
conspiracies? i have been working on the notion that these things cannot
work unless the ground is prepared, on the 'conditions of possibility' -
but again there is the possibility that I reconstruct history to fit
foucault, which was not his way of working! Perhaps there is no escape
from the endless accumulation of detail in time and place. The urge to
impose order, i.e. a grand theory, on the otherwise incomprehensible
accumulation of detail seems inescapable.
nesta