Re: Zero-tolerance policing and governmentality

This is a lengthy reply to Mark's response to my question of the relation
between zero-tolerance policing and govermentality.


Mark,
My initial impulse is to say, "Oh yes, i see what you mean." I could simply
accept your concluding paragraph:

" Maybe governmentality is a product of a modernist mind set which is now -
for many reasons- changing. The politics of governmentality theoretically
dealt with individuals as citizens - the population as resource? Today's
zero-tolerated groups aren't wanted! No need to incorporate them back into
society. This chimes with Bauman's argument that in post modern society
there are the seduced and the repressed: those who can take part in a
market society and those who can't."

But, because I think your hesitations about my post and your reasons for
distinguishing zero-tolerance models from governmentality are important, I
would like to take this further.


1. Accepting that governmentality is a product of a modernist mind set which
is now changing for various reasons, I tend to think of this "changing" in a
fashion similar to Foucault's discussion of the "change" from discipline to
government.
In "Governmentality" Foucault makes two crucial points of clarification
before providing a summary definition of governmentality. The first, deals
with sovereignty and the second with discipline. He introduces these
clarifications with a statement that sets up my point quite clearly, "?the
transition which takes place at the end of the eighteenth century from an art
of government to a political science, from a regime dominated by structures of
sovereignty to one ruled by techniques of government [by governmentality?],
turns on the theme of population and hence on the birth of political economy
(p.101)." BUT, as Foucault emphasizes strongly, rather than sovereignty
ceasing to function, the previous attempt to develop an art of government out
of a theory of sovereignty emerges within the practicing of that art as the
problem of justifying the sovereign character of the state in terms of an art
of government. Similarly, rather than discipline ceasing to function, it
actually becomes more valorized precisely because of the need to manage
populations.
So, "Accordingly, we need to see things not in terms of the replacement of
sovereignty by a disciplinary society and the subsequent replacement of a
disciplinary society by a society of government; in reality one has a
triangle, sovereignty-discipline-government, which has as its primary target
the population and as its essential mechanism the apparatus of security
(p.102)." And similarly, if we are trying to see how Foucault's practices of
thinking might enable us to engage with contemporary events such as zero-
tolerance policing or genetics, then govermentality understood as a product of
a modernist mind set should in no way foreclose us to the possibility that
governmentality still functions with in the spaces of today, be they labeled
post-modern, post-industrial, or late-modern.
Without such a foreclosure, we can entertain the questions of how
governmentality functions now (even if only in a residual form) and of how it
functions through relations to other aspects of the current conjuncture.
For example, perhaps there is a relation between the formational role of
governmentality in the practices constitutive of the current conjuncture, such
as zero-tolerance policing. If so, perhaps it might enable a critical
engagement with zero-tolerance policing, among other practices.
2. Granting that Foucault's notion of governmentality understands
governmentality as a complex form of power constituted by various practices
such that it has "population as its target," could it be the case that
exclusionary tactics could be understood as a techniques of government? Is it
possible to think of zero-tolerance policing (in the Chattanooga schools in
particular) as an apparatus of security? For example, because the "bad" and
"violent" (dangerous individuals) students are to be removed from the
educational apparatus, does that mean that they some how are no longer part of
the population and no longer in need of management? Or, could those no longer
accepted in the educational (security?) apparatus be simply produced as a
subset of the larger population that is to be managed by techniques of
government other than educational techniques?
With these questions, I have yet to develop an understanding of how Foucault
is using the notion security. So, I pose them as more than rhetorical
questions. Any help in more concretely linking these questions to Foucault's
development and use of the notion of security would be greatly appreciated.
3. For now, I am not sure how to address Bauman's depiction of post-modern
society. But below are a couple of quick responses:

a. How does the practice of forcing the dangerous individuals out of the
public education system constitute absolute removal of them from society such
that they have to be reincorporated? Does the practice of expelling them
remove them from the space of the population we might call society? Or, does
expelling them incorporate them via the act of excluding them from the
educational apparatus as particular elements of society - the "uneducable." I
am reminded of the phrase "feebleminded" and the history of practices of
either creating homes for "them" or policing their reproduction.

b. Regarding seduction (as enabling) and repression (as disabling), I am not
sure how we go by way of Foucault back to a notion of repression. Equally, I
am not sure about the image of the post-modern society as the space where
there are only two types of people ("those who can take part in a market
society and those who can't") defined in relation to the market and capacity
to function in the market. It seems to me that Foucault's work on
governmentality is precisely a critique of the techniques of understanding the
diversity of techniques of forming populations such that types function to
normalize through a simultaneous de-individualization and individualization
ONLY IN TERMS OF ONE AXIS of power. Regardless of my reading of Foucault, does
the post-modern condition mean that national, racial, and gender differences
(in their functions as resistant and their functions as oppressive/productive)
among the numerous other differences we could list are reducible to class
differences. If yes, I disagree.
However, I may be misunderstanding Bauman's concepts of those who can
participate in the market and those who cannot participate in the market. I am
thinking that those who cannot are like those delinquents the Chattanooga
school system does not want - they are expelled from the market and therefore
from society and thus are dis-incorporated. Or are they, incorporated as the
class of that opposes those that can participate? If yes to the latter, then
how is it that they are ever outside society - outside the population?


Chad











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