Re: disciplinary society in crisis

Ali

Thanks a lot for a great post :) I'm especially interested in this
paragraph:

<< What has become unbearable and intolerable is the form of power that
purports to define people's life, individual and social. Capitalist
governmental rationality and its access to and its authority over the
individual and social life is being challenged. This is happening because
the form of power which sustains such a governmental rationality i.e.
bio/disciplinary power is increasingly becoming unacceptable and
illegitimate in modern capitalist societies. Modern single-issue movements
and struggles should be seen in this context. They are not just single-issue
movements but they have general import too and that general import is that
they are (or they have potential to become) struggles against the hegemony
of bio/disciplinary power. >>

So would the success of these struggles be, for you, the "maturation" of
disciplinary society? I'm reminded, sort of, of Baudrillard: in general, the
notion that Foucault's critique of the stabilizing and normalizing effects
of disciplinary power places an implicit emphasis on pure difference, and
that perhaps this is precisely the ideology of late capitalism (please
excuse me terminology here). Would the proliferation of new identities (via
these single-issue movements) be a challenge to disciplinary society, or
simply one of its prime effects?

I'm a little confused; very interested.

Nate


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