Mitchell Dean | Copenhagen Business School, CBS (original) (raw)
Papers by Mitchell Dean
Global Society, 2024
The paper examines "authoritarian governmentality". It argues that there are salient differences ... more The paper examines "authoritarian governmentality". It argues that there are salient differences between the contemporary intellectual and political context and those of the 1990s when it was first developed. Chief among these is the confidence by which we can approach liberal governing itself as the norm of contemporary governmentality. The first wave of governmentality studies identified authoritarian governmentality in both non-liberal regimes and in the consequences of liberalism's norm of the self-responsible subject and its governing through civil society. This paper extends these observations: first by proposing an analysis of the kinds of order that different rationalities and technologies invoke, and secondly, by arguing for the linking of an analytics of government to both the practical capacities of sovereignty and the practices through which supreme authority is constituted. While liberal and authoritarian governmentalities are far from mutually exclusive, the absent concept of authority helps clarify what is at issue.
Political Theology, 2022
In this article, we claim, firstly, that the turn to an “ethical” politics focused on subjectivit... more In this article, we claim, firstly, that the turn to an “ethical” politics
focused on subjectivity and its transformation, announced by
post-structuralist theorists in the 1970s, can be found today in
forms of progressive politics, illustrated by struggles against
racism and their articulation by consultants and educators.
Secondly, this turn entails targeting the “enemy within,” whether
it be the inner fascist (Guattari, Foucault) or white privilege (Di
Angelo, Kendi). Rather than an extension of Lasch’s therapeutic
“culture of narcissism,” it is a turn to practices reminiscent of
public rituals of expiation of guilt and acts of purification
(exomologesis) characterizing what Weber referred to as “sects.”
Pace Foucault, the “main danger” lies not in the “subjectifying”
practices of the human sciences descended from auricular
confession and the Christian pastorate, but rather the
displacement of formal politics and attendant “civil religion”
(Bellah) by conflicts between charismatic sects claiming
exemplary subjectivity and virtuosity.
South Atlantic Quarterly, 2019
Our present is not lacking in novel and alarming characteristics and diagnoses: of a post-truth p... more Our present is not lacking in novel and alarming characteristics and diagnoses: of a post-truth politics and the spread of fake news; of the dark arts of the internet; of populism as movement, politics , and incompetent policy; of explicitly illiberal democracies and regimes; of collusions and meddling in high politics; of antiglobalism, trade wars, and the making and remaking of state enemies such as Russia. It would be tempting to imagine that this present is a time like no other, a hinge moment of epochal significance. Above all, it would be easy, and all too careless, to imagine that liberal democracies, and the neoliberalism that has played a major part in public governance for the last forty years, have made a sudden and unexpected authoritarian lurch. What follows are two intertwined stories concerning neoliberalism and its authoritarian dimension. One is conceptual and theoretical and concerns a small domain of academic and intellectual activity: that of Michel Foucault, his influence in what has been called "governmentality studies" (Sen nelart 2007: 390), and this field's status in a present in which there has been a belated rediscovery of the political. The second is the story of a different scale: of frameworks of governing and politics in contemporary liberal democracies, with a particular emphasis on
the extent to which these forms of governing have been liberal, in the sense
that they operate primarily in relation to the freedom of the governed and
only occasionally resort to measures that are coercive or illiberal. At stake in
the latter is the question of sovereign power, the nation, the state, and the
territory. For some time, we have been exercised with the irrationality of the
rationalities of neoliberal government. Today we are forced to turn to the
rationality of irrational neoliberal politics.
Telos 185, 2018
The oath pertains to law, sovereignty, and office. A public servant takes an oath. A witness and ... more The oath pertains to law, sovereignty, and office. A public servant takes
an oath. A witness and a juror at a trial swear an oath. The British monarch
swears a coronation oath and the president-elect of the United States
an oath of office. While the coronation of the monarch has been regarded
as “medieval” and the inauguration of the president as “ceremonial” or
“symbolic,” it would be a mistake to view them as empty rituals, particularly
the oaths taken. And while the oath invokes God, it would be an
error to assume that it is merely an atavism, a retroversion, or a vestige
of a more religious past. But what it is and what it does is far from clear,
including to those who swear oaths. This essay draws on classical political thought and contemporary work in comparative religion, public administration, history of ideas, linguistics and social philosophy, and using multiple examples, to understand the conundrums concerning the oath and, in particular, its relation to office.
Thesis Eleven , 2018
This is more a personal and partial remembrance of my friend and colleague, Barry Hindess, than a... more This is more a personal and partial remembrance of my friend and colleague, Barry Hindess, than a formal obituary, but it does address the nature of his intellectual inspiration.
Theory, Culture and Society
Countering claims of its impossibility, this paper argues for economic theology as an intelligibl... more Countering claims of its impossibility, this paper argues for economic theology as an intelligible figure of contemporary political rationality and organization, and a distinctive analytical strategy in relation to forms of liberal and neoliberal governmentality and the contemporary management of social life. As an analytical strategy, it has two arms: an institutional one, drawing upon Michel Foucault's work on the pastorate; and a conceptual one, following from Giorgio Agamben on oikonomia, order and providence. Economic theology was the arcana of twentieth-century debates on both political theology and governmentality and a condition for their emergence. It formed the horizon of Carl Schmitt's intervention of a political theology in response to Max Weber, and, as the pastorate, it was for Foucault the historical background of the emergence of the liberal arts of government. While appearing as a new paradigm, it thus has a measure of priority over our more established ones. Furthermore, to the extent that economic theology comes to occupy the place of political rationality of contemporary liberal-democratic societies, the political becomes less a rational public sphere and more a form of public liturgy.
Telos, 2017
This present paper takes its initial inspiration from Carl Schmitt’s claim in 1927 that the origi... more This present paper takes its initial inspiration from Carl Schmitt’s claim in 1927 that the original democratic phenomenon is acclamation, and draws upon the interchange between religious and political forms of acclamation observed by Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz and Erik Peterson and elaborated recently by Giorgio Agamben. If Schmitt is correct, then acclamation is central to the construction of “the people” who by definition are the source of democratic political legitimacy. What is required is an “analytics of publicity” that would study the different ways in which the public is formed through different forms of acclamation. There are three such ways. In the first, typified by direct democracy of an authoritarian kind and certain assemblies in liberal democracy, political acclamation is performed though the actual presence of the people as assembled public and by hand gestures, waving and chants. In the second, acclamation takes the form of public opinion formed through the “mass media”, giving rise to theories such as those of the “society of the spectacle” and the “manufacture of consent.” In the third, acclamation occurs through what is called today “social media,”, where it is possible to “follow” and be followed, to “friend” and “unfriend”, like and dislike, and express opinions in a virtual public domain at almost any time and anywhere. Here the practice of acclamation produces what we shall call “public mood.” All three are present in contemporary liberal democracies. Schmitt had already foreseen something like this situation in his Constitutional Theory, which “would not be an especially intensive democracy, but it would provide proof that the state and the public were fully privatized.” It is possible that this latter form of acclamation that marks a radical caesura in contemporary liberal democracies, rendering inoperative the previous public opinion dispositive, and leading to the situation where the mass media, its commentariat, and national opinion polls, were uniformly wrong with reference to the 2016 presidential campaign and general election in the United States..
The Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism, 2018
This is the typescript of: Mitchell Dean, ‘Foucault and the neoliberalism controversy’, in D. C... more This is the typescript of: Mitchell Dean, ‘Foucault and the neoliberalism controversy’, in D. Cahill, M. Cooper, M. Konings, and D. Primrose (eds), The Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism. London: Sage, pp. 40-54.
It includes reviews of a) the current controversy of Foucault's relation to neoliberalism (2012-2016), b) Foucault's views of neoliberalism and the arts of government, and c) his view of neoliberal subjectivity, and refections on Foucault and d) his intellectual habitus, e) his political and historical context, and f) his relation to neoliberalism as an ideal, a concrete political program and a social policy framework. It argues that there are three specific elements of what might be considered neoliberalism to which Foucault had an affirmative relationship: 1. the form of regulation without 'subjectification' imagined by the Chicago School; 2. the political faction of the French Socialists, the Second Left; and 3. the critique of the welfare state as inducing dependency.
European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 2017
This paper locates Giorgio Agamben’s book Opus Dei in his larger Homo Sacer project and particula... more This paper locates Giorgio Agamben’s book Opus Dei in his larger Homo Sacer project and particularly a series of genealogical and archaeological studies within it. It argues for a disenchanted and dispersed reading of Agamben’s approach to office as a resource for concerns that are germane to cultural and political sociology and that are irreducible to Heideggerian metaphysics. This reading foregrounds methodological questions of genealogy and archaeology (and hence Agamben’s relation to Foucault), religious liturgy and political practice, and the theory of the priesthood as a paradigm for office. More
broadly, Agamben’s work on office is shown to bear upon questions of the constitution of sovereignty and government as forms of power, on different forms of rationalisation, and themes of secularisation and modernity found in classical sociology and intellectual history. In part, it is a response to Ian Hunter's paper in the same issue of the journal.
TELOSscope, 2018
The article addresses the significance of the current Cambridge Analytica and Facebook "scandal" ... more The article addresses the significance of the current Cambridge Analytica and Facebook "scandal" in relation to what Michel Foucault called "modes of veridiction" and the "liturgical unfolding of truth." It uses the concept of "political acclamation" to discuss the nature and use of digital data and examines what it means for the nature of current and future democracy, public opinion, and media. Here is the URL: http://www.telospress.com/the-dark-arts-reach-the-internet/
I have attached the typescript.
Cambridge University Press, 1998
I put this here in memoriam of my colleague, mentor, and above all, dear friend, Barry Hindess, w... more I put this here in memoriam of my colleague, mentor, and above all, dear friend, Barry Hindess, who has died recently. Published by Cambridge University Press in 1998, this is our Introduction to the first national collection of articles of what latter would become known as "governmentality studies."
Governance as social and political communication (ed. by Henrik P. Bang), 2003
This paper explores the relationship between the conceptual and theoretical claims around individ... more This paper explores the relationship between the conceptual and theoretical claims around individualisation, life-politics and the self, with the corollary that regulation takes the form of a 'culture governance', and the normative, political, and policy impacts of such a view. Written in the early 2000s, it focuses on Foucault, Giddens, Beck, Castells, and contemporary neoliberalism, neopaternalism and The Third Way.
This is my contribution to a symposium on Dotan Leshem's book, The Origins of Neoliberalism: Mode... more This is my contribution to a symposium on Dotan Leshem's book, The Origins of Neoliberalism: Modeling the Economy from Jesus to Foucault. The rest of the symposium is available here, as well as Dotan's replies.
From: P. Bonditti et al (eds) Foucault and the Modern International. Routlledge, 2017.
This is the uncorrected proof of my contribution to a symposium published in European Political S... more This is the uncorrected proof of my contribution to a symposium published in European Political Science on Wendy's Brown's book, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Zone Books, 2015). In it I explore, through philology and political thought, notions of democracy and economy, and suggest a potential set of resources for resistance to neoliberalism that emerges when we exorcize the demon of our own state-phobia.
This article approaches social media from the theory of the religio-political practice of acclama... more This article approaches social media from the theory of the religio-political practice of acclamation revived by Agamben and following twentieth-century social and political thought and theology (of Weber, Peterson, Schmitt, Kantorowicz). It supplements that
theory by more recent political-theoretical, historical and sociological investigations and regards acclamation as a ‘social institution’ following Mauss. Acclamation is a practice that forms publics, whether as the direct presence of the ‘people’, mass-mediated ‘public opinion’, or a ‘public mood’ decipherable through countless social media postings. The article surveys issues of differential geographies of access, weighting of posts, value creation, orality and gesture, algorithmic governmentality, and Big Data and knowledge production. It argues that social media constitute a public from a mass of individualized, private postings. It concludes that they make possible forms of political calculability and action, yet are continuous with ritual and liturgical elements of political life. This study contributes to an analytics of publicity.
Keywords
acclamation, algorithms, Big Data, political theology, public, social media, democracy
History and Theory 54 (3), Oct 2015
This paper responds to and comments on many of the themes of the book under consideration concern... more This paper responds to and comments on many of the themes of the book under consideration concerning Foucault and neoliberalism. In doing so, it offers reflections on the relation between the habitus of the intellectual and the political contexts of action and engagement in the case of Foucault, and the strengths and weaknesses of his characterization of his work in terms of an “experimental” ethos. It argues that it is possible to identify his distinctive views on neoliberalism as a programmatic ideal, as a language of critique of the postwar welfare state, and as an element within actual political forces such as the French “Second Left” of the 1970s. It examines the legacy of Foucault in “governmentality studies” and argues for attentiveness to the different intellectual positions, and their potentially divergent political consequences, within this school of thought. It concludes by suggesting that the discussion currently taking place, and in part inaugurated by this book, might signal a change of his status in the humanities and social sciences today from “unsurpassable horizon” of critical thought to acknowledged classical thinker, with strengths and limitations, and a series of problems that might not be our own.
Keywords: Foucault, neoliberalism, Marxism, governmentality, politics, critique, ethos, habitus
Global Society, 2024
The paper examines "authoritarian governmentality". It argues that there are salient differences ... more The paper examines "authoritarian governmentality". It argues that there are salient differences between the contemporary intellectual and political context and those of the 1990s when it was first developed. Chief among these is the confidence by which we can approach liberal governing itself as the norm of contemporary governmentality. The first wave of governmentality studies identified authoritarian governmentality in both non-liberal regimes and in the consequences of liberalism's norm of the self-responsible subject and its governing through civil society. This paper extends these observations: first by proposing an analysis of the kinds of order that different rationalities and technologies invoke, and secondly, by arguing for the linking of an analytics of government to both the practical capacities of sovereignty and the practices through which supreme authority is constituted. While liberal and authoritarian governmentalities are far from mutually exclusive, the absent concept of authority helps clarify what is at issue.
Political Theology, 2022
In this article, we claim, firstly, that the turn to an “ethical” politics focused on subjectivit... more In this article, we claim, firstly, that the turn to an “ethical” politics
focused on subjectivity and its transformation, announced by
post-structuralist theorists in the 1970s, can be found today in
forms of progressive politics, illustrated by struggles against
racism and their articulation by consultants and educators.
Secondly, this turn entails targeting the “enemy within,” whether
it be the inner fascist (Guattari, Foucault) or white privilege (Di
Angelo, Kendi). Rather than an extension of Lasch’s therapeutic
“culture of narcissism,” it is a turn to practices reminiscent of
public rituals of expiation of guilt and acts of purification
(exomologesis) characterizing what Weber referred to as “sects.”
Pace Foucault, the “main danger” lies not in the “subjectifying”
practices of the human sciences descended from auricular
confession and the Christian pastorate, but rather the
displacement of formal politics and attendant “civil religion”
(Bellah) by conflicts between charismatic sects claiming
exemplary subjectivity and virtuosity.
South Atlantic Quarterly, 2019
Our present is not lacking in novel and alarming characteristics and diagnoses: of a post-truth p... more Our present is not lacking in novel and alarming characteristics and diagnoses: of a post-truth politics and the spread of fake news; of the dark arts of the internet; of populism as movement, politics , and incompetent policy; of explicitly illiberal democracies and regimes; of collusions and meddling in high politics; of antiglobalism, trade wars, and the making and remaking of state enemies such as Russia. It would be tempting to imagine that this present is a time like no other, a hinge moment of epochal significance. Above all, it would be easy, and all too careless, to imagine that liberal democracies, and the neoliberalism that has played a major part in public governance for the last forty years, have made a sudden and unexpected authoritarian lurch. What follows are two intertwined stories concerning neoliberalism and its authoritarian dimension. One is conceptual and theoretical and concerns a small domain of academic and intellectual activity: that of Michel Foucault, his influence in what has been called "governmentality studies" (Sen nelart 2007: 390), and this field's status in a present in which there has been a belated rediscovery of the political. The second is the story of a different scale: of frameworks of governing and politics in contemporary liberal democracies, with a particular emphasis on
the extent to which these forms of governing have been liberal, in the sense
that they operate primarily in relation to the freedom of the governed and
only occasionally resort to measures that are coercive or illiberal. At stake in
the latter is the question of sovereign power, the nation, the state, and the
territory. For some time, we have been exercised with the irrationality of the
rationalities of neoliberal government. Today we are forced to turn to the
rationality of irrational neoliberal politics.
Telos 185, 2018
The oath pertains to law, sovereignty, and office. A public servant takes an oath. A witness and ... more The oath pertains to law, sovereignty, and office. A public servant takes
an oath. A witness and a juror at a trial swear an oath. The British monarch
swears a coronation oath and the president-elect of the United States
an oath of office. While the coronation of the monarch has been regarded
as “medieval” and the inauguration of the president as “ceremonial” or
“symbolic,” it would be a mistake to view them as empty rituals, particularly
the oaths taken. And while the oath invokes God, it would be an
error to assume that it is merely an atavism, a retroversion, or a vestige
of a more religious past. But what it is and what it does is far from clear,
including to those who swear oaths. This essay draws on classical political thought and contemporary work in comparative religion, public administration, history of ideas, linguistics and social philosophy, and using multiple examples, to understand the conundrums concerning the oath and, in particular, its relation to office.
Thesis Eleven , 2018
This is more a personal and partial remembrance of my friend and colleague, Barry Hindess, than a... more This is more a personal and partial remembrance of my friend and colleague, Barry Hindess, than a formal obituary, but it does address the nature of his intellectual inspiration.
Theory, Culture and Society
Countering claims of its impossibility, this paper argues for economic theology as an intelligibl... more Countering claims of its impossibility, this paper argues for economic theology as an intelligible figure of contemporary political rationality and organization, and a distinctive analytical strategy in relation to forms of liberal and neoliberal governmentality and the contemporary management of social life. As an analytical strategy, it has two arms: an institutional one, drawing upon Michel Foucault's work on the pastorate; and a conceptual one, following from Giorgio Agamben on oikonomia, order and providence. Economic theology was the arcana of twentieth-century debates on both political theology and governmentality and a condition for their emergence. It formed the horizon of Carl Schmitt's intervention of a political theology in response to Max Weber, and, as the pastorate, it was for Foucault the historical background of the emergence of the liberal arts of government. While appearing as a new paradigm, it thus has a measure of priority over our more established ones. Furthermore, to the extent that economic theology comes to occupy the place of political rationality of contemporary liberal-democratic societies, the political becomes less a rational public sphere and more a form of public liturgy.
Telos, 2017
This present paper takes its initial inspiration from Carl Schmitt’s claim in 1927 that the origi... more This present paper takes its initial inspiration from Carl Schmitt’s claim in 1927 that the original democratic phenomenon is acclamation, and draws upon the interchange between religious and political forms of acclamation observed by Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz and Erik Peterson and elaborated recently by Giorgio Agamben. If Schmitt is correct, then acclamation is central to the construction of “the people” who by definition are the source of democratic political legitimacy. What is required is an “analytics of publicity” that would study the different ways in which the public is formed through different forms of acclamation. There are three such ways. In the first, typified by direct democracy of an authoritarian kind and certain assemblies in liberal democracy, political acclamation is performed though the actual presence of the people as assembled public and by hand gestures, waving and chants. In the second, acclamation takes the form of public opinion formed through the “mass media”, giving rise to theories such as those of the “society of the spectacle” and the “manufacture of consent.” In the third, acclamation occurs through what is called today “social media,”, where it is possible to “follow” and be followed, to “friend” and “unfriend”, like and dislike, and express opinions in a virtual public domain at almost any time and anywhere. Here the practice of acclamation produces what we shall call “public mood.” All three are present in contemporary liberal democracies. Schmitt had already foreseen something like this situation in his Constitutional Theory, which “would not be an especially intensive democracy, but it would provide proof that the state and the public were fully privatized.” It is possible that this latter form of acclamation that marks a radical caesura in contemporary liberal democracies, rendering inoperative the previous public opinion dispositive, and leading to the situation where the mass media, its commentariat, and national opinion polls, were uniformly wrong with reference to the 2016 presidential campaign and general election in the United States..
The Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism, 2018
This is the typescript of: Mitchell Dean, ‘Foucault and the neoliberalism controversy’, in D. C... more This is the typescript of: Mitchell Dean, ‘Foucault and the neoliberalism controversy’, in D. Cahill, M. Cooper, M. Konings, and D. Primrose (eds), The Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism. London: Sage, pp. 40-54.
It includes reviews of a) the current controversy of Foucault's relation to neoliberalism (2012-2016), b) Foucault's views of neoliberalism and the arts of government, and c) his view of neoliberal subjectivity, and refections on Foucault and d) his intellectual habitus, e) his political and historical context, and f) his relation to neoliberalism as an ideal, a concrete political program and a social policy framework. It argues that there are three specific elements of what might be considered neoliberalism to which Foucault had an affirmative relationship: 1. the form of regulation without 'subjectification' imagined by the Chicago School; 2. the political faction of the French Socialists, the Second Left; and 3. the critique of the welfare state as inducing dependency.
European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 2017
This paper locates Giorgio Agamben’s book Opus Dei in his larger Homo Sacer project and particula... more This paper locates Giorgio Agamben’s book Opus Dei in his larger Homo Sacer project and particularly a series of genealogical and archaeological studies within it. It argues for a disenchanted and dispersed reading of Agamben’s approach to office as a resource for concerns that are germane to cultural and political sociology and that are irreducible to Heideggerian metaphysics. This reading foregrounds methodological questions of genealogy and archaeology (and hence Agamben’s relation to Foucault), religious liturgy and political practice, and the theory of the priesthood as a paradigm for office. More
broadly, Agamben’s work on office is shown to bear upon questions of the constitution of sovereignty and government as forms of power, on different forms of rationalisation, and themes of secularisation and modernity found in classical sociology and intellectual history. In part, it is a response to Ian Hunter's paper in the same issue of the journal.
TELOSscope, 2018
The article addresses the significance of the current Cambridge Analytica and Facebook "scandal" ... more The article addresses the significance of the current Cambridge Analytica and Facebook "scandal" in relation to what Michel Foucault called "modes of veridiction" and the "liturgical unfolding of truth." It uses the concept of "political acclamation" to discuss the nature and use of digital data and examines what it means for the nature of current and future democracy, public opinion, and media. Here is the URL: http://www.telospress.com/the-dark-arts-reach-the-internet/
I have attached the typescript.
Cambridge University Press, 1998
I put this here in memoriam of my colleague, mentor, and above all, dear friend, Barry Hindess, w... more I put this here in memoriam of my colleague, mentor, and above all, dear friend, Barry Hindess, who has died recently. Published by Cambridge University Press in 1998, this is our Introduction to the first national collection of articles of what latter would become known as "governmentality studies."
Governance as social and political communication (ed. by Henrik P. Bang), 2003
This paper explores the relationship between the conceptual and theoretical claims around individ... more This paper explores the relationship between the conceptual and theoretical claims around individualisation, life-politics and the self, with the corollary that regulation takes the form of a 'culture governance', and the normative, political, and policy impacts of such a view. Written in the early 2000s, it focuses on Foucault, Giddens, Beck, Castells, and contemporary neoliberalism, neopaternalism and The Third Way.
This is my contribution to a symposium on Dotan Leshem's book, The Origins of Neoliberalism: Mode... more This is my contribution to a symposium on Dotan Leshem's book, The Origins of Neoliberalism: Modeling the Economy from Jesus to Foucault. The rest of the symposium is available here, as well as Dotan's replies.
From: P. Bonditti et al (eds) Foucault and the Modern International. Routlledge, 2017.
This is the uncorrected proof of my contribution to a symposium published in European Political S... more This is the uncorrected proof of my contribution to a symposium published in European Political Science on Wendy's Brown's book, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Zone Books, 2015). In it I explore, through philology and political thought, notions of democracy and economy, and suggest a potential set of resources for resistance to neoliberalism that emerges when we exorcize the demon of our own state-phobia.
This article approaches social media from the theory of the religio-political practice of acclama... more This article approaches social media from the theory of the religio-political practice of acclamation revived by Agamben and following twentieth-century social and political thought and theology (of Weber, Peterson, Schmitt, Kantorowicz). It supplements that
theory by more recent political-theoretical, historical and sociological investigations and regards acclamation as a ‘social institution’ following Mauss. Acclamation is a practice that forms publics, whether as the direct presence of the ‘people’, mass-mediated ‘public opinion’, or a ‘public mood’ decipherable through countless social media postings. The article surveys issues of differential geographies of access, weighting of posts, value creation, orality and gesture, algorithmic governmentality, and Big Data and knowledge production. It argues that social media constitute a public from a mass of individualized, private postings. It concludes that they make possible forms of political calculability and action, yet are continuous with ritual and liturgical elements of political life. This study contributes to an analytics of publicity.
Keywords
acclamation, algorithms, Big Data, political theology, public, social media, democracy
History and Theory 54 (3), Oct 2015
This paper responds to and comments on many of the themes of the book under consideration concern... more This paper responds to and comments on many of the themes of the book under consideration concerning Foucault and neoliberalism. In doing so, it offers reflections on the relation between the habitus of the intellectual and the political contexts of action and engagement in the case of Foucault, and the strengths and weaknesses of his characterization of his work in terms of an “experimental” ethos. It argues that it is possible to identify his distinctive views on neoliberalism as a programmatic ideal, as a language of critique of the postwar welfare state, and as an element within actual political forces such as the French “Second Left” of the 1970s. It examines the legacy of Foucault in “governmentality studies” and argues for attentiveness to the different intellectual positions, and their potentially divergent political consequences, within this school of thought. It concludes by suggesting that the discussion currently taking place, and in part inaugurated by this book, might signal a change of his status in the humanities and social sciences today from “unsurpassable horizon” of critical thought to acknowledged classical thinker, with strengths and limitations, and a series of problems that might not be our own.
Keywords: Foucault, neoliberalism, Marxism, governmentality, politics, critique, ethos, habitus
... and the governmentalization of the state 122 6 Liberalism 133 Economy 134 Security 137 Law an... more ... and the governmentalization of the state 122 6 Liberalism 133 Economy 134 Security 137 Law and norm ... In this respect, then, the concern in this book for 'authoritarian governmentality', andthe admission that the concept not only applies to non-liberal forms of rule but also ...
Verso, 2021
These are the contents of my book with Daniel Zamora.
Lux Éditeur,, 2019
La dernière décennie de Michel Foucault a coïncidé avec l'agonie des espoirs de transformation so... more La dernière décennie de Michel Foucault a coïncidé avec l'agonie des espoirs de transformation sociale qui avaient marqué l'après-guerre. Face à cette « fin de la révolution », le philosophe a tenté de réinventer la manière dont nous pensons la politique et la résistance, ce que sa génération n'avait, jugeait-il, pas réussi à faire. C'est dans cette perspective qu'il s'est intéressé au néolibéralisme en tant qu'outil permettant de repenser les fondements conceptuels de la gauche et d'imaginer une gouvernementalité plus tolérante aux expérimentations sociales, ouvrant un espace aux pratiques minoritaires et à une plus grande autonomie du sujet vis-à-vis de lui-même. Le moyen, en somme, de réaliser le projet énoncé à la fin de sa vie, celui de n'être « pas tellement gouverné ». Et c'est ainsi que, dans sa quête d'une « gouvernementalité de gauche », Foucault a anticipé et contribué, en quelque sorte, au façonnement de la situation politique contemporaine. Mitchell Dean est professeur de sociologie historique et politique et théoricien des sciences sociales. Il enseigne la gouvernance publique à la Copenhagen Business School. Daniel Zamora est sociologue à l'Université libre de Bruxelles. Il a récemment publié Contre l'allocation universelle (Lux, 2016).
The url here is a link to Stanford University Press page, with cover, endorsements, contents and ... more The url here is a link to Stanford University Press page, with cover, endorsements, contents and Introduction of this book published January 6, 2016.
this exceptionally clear and lucid book quickly became the standard overview of what are now call... more this exceptionally clear and lucid book quickly became the standard overview of what are now called 'governmentality studies'.
Press, 2007. xii + 228 pp. ISBN-13 9780335208975, £22.99 (pbk) on Domestic and International Rule... more Press, 2007. xii + 228 pp. ISBN-13 9780335208975, £22.99 (pbk) on Domestic and International Rule. Milton Keynes: Open University
At the beginning and end of Foucault’s decade-long excursus on power, he refers to the Greek imag... more At the beginning and end of Foucault’s decade-long excursus on power, he refers to the Greek image of the "sumbolon" in which two halves must be joined to become “a unique object whose overall configuration is the manifest form of power”. In his investigations into power, he divides and joins the halves of: sovereignty & biopolitics, the religious& the political, the theological and the secular, the juridical-political & war and battle, reign & government, games of freedom & states of domination, violence & consent, totalization & individualization, political technologies & techniques of the self. We can add here: the domestic and the international. While ‘domestic’ social sciences, such as sociology, are liable to find Foucault deficient in privileging the economic-governmental axis over the more ‘structural’ one of sovereignty and the state, the critical study of international relations welcomes his governmental-constructivist search for an analysis of power beyond the state and sovereignty. This paper argues for a putting together of different pieces of Foucault's thought to suggest an approach to contemporary power relations as a field of oscillation and vibration between the juridical-institutional form of sovereignty and the economic-managerial one of governmentality. Another name for the 'sumbolon* is what I elsewhere call 'the signature of power'.
This talk is a contribution to a workshop on new Authoritarian Capitalisms which explores my work... more This talk is a contribution to a workshop on new Authoritarian Capitalisms which explores my work on authoritarian liberalism and signatures of power in relation to themes of liberalism, democracy, neoliberalism and the supposed opposition between liberalism and authoritarianism.
Los Angeles Review of Books
THE RECENT PUBLICATION of the long-awaited fourth volume of his History of Sexuality, Les Aveux d... more THE RECENT PUBLICATION of the long-awaited fourth volume of his History of Sexuality, Les Aveux de la chair, raises questions as to why and how Foucault chose to reinvent his magnum opus as an investigation of ancient “techniques of the self” and their incorporation in early Christianity. In some ways, this shift parallels his reformulation of power relations in terms of governmentality, which was triggered by his encounter with neoliberalism during the same period.