Re: zero-tolerance

Coleman's post regarding the ongoing zero-tolerance discussion is trenchant
and opening in several ways.

By emphasizing the primacy of z_t functioning as reinforcement of "the network
of power relations within the school (my emphasis)", a few questions of a
more direct character than my general one regarding z_t as a technique of
government come to mind:
1. Moving from this view of z_t, Coleman opens the possibility of thinking z_t
in terms of 'security.' Z-t functions as "a reaffirmation of respect for
those power relations that keep the school running." These power relations
are the school, as an event, an ongoing ____?______. I leave the blank
because I hesitate to put in technique of government and spin us back into the
problematic either government /or discipline (A false dichotomy, but a viable
distinction from Foucault's point of view in the essay 'governmentally').
Still, the security of the school is its holding out, its maintenance over
time.
2. How does this compare/relate to Foucault's understanding of the emergence
of governmental rationality within Liberalism such that the triangle of
sovereignty-discipline-government (which I mentioned in response to Matt
earlier) has population as its primary target and "as its essential mechanism
apparatus of security"?
3. Security is coupled with liberty because from the liberal perspective the
security of the state is its prosperity. From the same perspective, prosperity
arises from an art of government that allows the capacity of the citizen to
exercise the natural flow of action for HIS own self-interest (the market-
lassez faire mythology). Such an art of government depoliticizes the citizen
in the act of making a citizen out of the subject, by naturalization as an
individual with interests within the population that naturally tends towards
prosperity and thus security of the state. If this is correct, then how might
z_t (from Coleman's perspective of maintenance of the power relations that are
the school) attend to z_t in terms of an apparatus of security (rather than
say a state ideological apparatus). Or, would this be useful at all to do so?

Thanks,

Chad



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