Morality in Cultural Studies
Posted on April 27th, 2005, under Research, Reading
Last year I wrote a review of a cultural studies conference in the US (archived here) and mentioned the discourse of moralism implicit in the conference mandate. At the time I put this down to a degree of US-centrism on the part of the conference organisers given the politically charged atmosphere of an election year, but Gary Wickham’s article in the latest Cultural Studies Review considers moralism in cultural studies over a much longer period.
Wickham outlines two types of cultural studies intellectual: the ‘ethical-must-be-moral’ type which he claims has been the most dominant, and is represented in another Illinois artefact, the introduction to the Cultural Studies collection, as well as an essay in that collection by Stuart Hall). On the other hand, there is the ‘civil philosophy’ type, which ‘has had nothing like the same profile in the field’, and is drawn out through a consideration of Ian Hunter’s work. I’m fascinated by this distinction - the sheer ambition of it, if nothing else, although Wickham is quick to acknowledge that ‘while the ethical-must-be-moral type of cultural studies intellectual is undoubtedly the dominant type, there is a good deal of work produced in the field without the influence of the thinking informing this type’.
The kind of moralism Wickham identifies ‘is not about a clash between good and evil, but about empowering the disempowered’:
In short, cultural studies intellectuals, as [Nelson, Grossberg & Treichler] would have them formed, are flexible, through their interdisciplinary and open minds, and, crucially, willing and able to direct those minds to the cultural struggles involved in the politics of empowering the disempowered, whatever form those struggles may take.
Hall, however, ‘allows the morality mentioned above to become one with the politics associated with it’:
a central role for theory is to inculcate in the cultural studies practitioner a sense of politics as engaged politics, even an ‘angry’ politics, on behalf of the disempowered… To be a ‘serious’ cultural studies intellectual, it follows, the ethical direction any practitioner needs to take must be a moral direction—ethics cannot be allowed to wander away from morality—the morality involved being expressed as political engagement, in a movement, on behalf of the disempowered.
This leads to an appraisal of the function of such intellectuals:
…they seek to reveal the ways in which the empowered impose their own—false, bourgeois—aesthetic on the culture of the disempowered, and to reveal the possibility of countering the morality behind this aesthetic, by restoring to these subjects their true morality, in the form of their true, oppositionalist cultural subjectivity.
[…]The ethical-must-be-moral type of cultural studies intellectual chooses the morality-driven ethic of engagement to achieve the goal of empowering the disempowered yet is never able to leave behind the ethic of withdrawal from the world of politics and economics.
I guess the passage I’m having most trouble with, in light of my own project, is this one:
I am not suggesting that a cultural studies intellectual can’t engage in effective political action towards the goal of increasing social, cultural and economic equality, only that it is highly unlikely that such a person could achieve such goals as a cultural studies intellectual. The techniques and practices central to being a cultural studies intellectual—the writing and arguing styles, the manner of speaking in the classroom and at conferences—are not necessarily the techniques and practices needed to deal with the state and associated agencies, as Bennett is at pains to point out in his Culture: A Reformer’s Science. One would more likely benefit from the use of legal arguments, accounting techniques and the ability to juggle economic statistics.
I need some help here. Firstly - describing the two types can only work as a rhetorical strategy that posits the second as superior:
…where the ethical-must-be-moral type of intellectual thinks and feels the morality of empowering the disempowered, insists that a politics flows from this, and insists that an ethics is subsumed within it, the civil philosophy type separates morality, politics and ethics.…the civil philosophy type of intellectual brings morality into the same realm as politics and ethics, allowing it historical specificity.
It also means that, again, there is only one true form of effective politics: engaging with the State. So a mode of intervention that takes the form of attacking academic conventions (precisely ‘the writing and arguing styles, the manner of speaking in the classroom and at conferences’ Wickham mentions, which I argue are symptomatic of a wider structure of power and inequality) can’t be recognised in this schema.
On April 27th, 2005 at 3:21 pm, jean said:
Hmmm…I am most definitely reserving a seat at this particular roundtable - will have to leave my jacket on it for now as I’m racing off to teach.
On April 27th, 2005 at 6:31 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
Dare I say that Wickham is a sociologist (in light of his comments about politics?). Really nice guy - I’m sure he’d be more than happy to correspond about his ideas which he’s developed much more extensively in other work. He’s a co-author with my doctoral supervisor, Gavin Kendall, of quite a bit of work in political sociology and political theory.
On April 27th, 2005 at 6:36 pm, Glen said:
…but, mel, that is why Negri’s anti-Statist mode of resistance is so interesting! Production of the multitude! bah…
The classic example of what Wickham is discussing is Hebdige’s description of ’subcultures as noise’. His description is one that speaks to power without ever being powerful. For the subculturalists themselves it certainly was not noise, so why the hell call it ‘noise’?!? It was something that had to be affirmed and that ‘thing-of-affirmation’ is a lot more interesting than what the hegemonic mass media, police, government or even sometimes academics can say about the social phenomenon.
I disagree with Wickham about his rhetorical separation into only two categories. From what you have posted he seems to only outline ethical modes of practice that are structurally determined — be the structures derived from academic, governmental or whatever institutions. I have tried to address this very issue on my blog in rather oblique ways, because one of my problems is that I have been trained according to the first dominant model (”ethical-must-be-moral type of intellectual thinks and feels the morality of empowering the disempowered, insists that a politics flows from this, and insists that an ethics is subsumed within it”), but I am researching something that I am actually moving away from and not towards. I am disassociating myself from it. Therefore I need a much more pragmatic (or even evental!) ethics operating.
Indeed politics has reified itself. Could you imagine a cult studs academic being a politician? lol! I went along to the Fabian Society meeting at Gleebooks the other night and there is much I could not stomach in being associated with organised politics in any shape or form. I think I would rather kill myself… well, not really, but it just seems so stuck in a time warp of back-slapping and back-scratching. I can’t tolerate that shit.
A few questions:
Hmmm, don’t you think it is much more useful to think about ‘politics’ as an ethics of care than as an ethics of domination/resistance?
I agree with you that practice that engages with the politics of the present and is not contained within the legitimate domain of (State) Politics is important. But what is the efficacy of such actions? How do you define such actions?
The classic example of what I am getting at above can be found in the recent post-9/11 period. “You are either with us or against…” Bush’s core axiom is bullshit. I don’t agree with what the terrorists did (and did later in other contexts), nor do I agree with the action taken by governments in power. Wickham’s two model rhetorical construction breaks down straight away. I’ll be buggered if any sane cult studs academic would associate with the (State’s) Other of the terrorists and I hardly think there would be many who would agree with the actions of governments post-9/11. So what are we left with? Every single person who thinks the terrorists AND the governments are wrong is Othered. Just because the sum total of this set of people cannot be easily represented according to traditional methods of engagement does not mean they should be abandoned for pure Political critique. I dunno… I just find it incredibly problematic that it seems as if he is allowing Politics to determine what is political. We should never give up that terrain.
On April 27th, 2005 at 6:36 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
I suspect, though it’s been a long time since I’ve read Gary’s article (I heard it given as a conference paper) that both he and Ian Hunter (who’s at UQ in CHED now) are drawing extensively on Weber’s Politics as a Vocation.
I don’t have time to make extensive comment now, as I have an awful lot of work on my plate, but I’d note that Gary would surely acknowledge that the State is not the only game in town - he and Gavin have also written on Foucault & power. However, if the State isn’t the only game (with which I’d agree), one needs a more Gramscian strategy in order to engage with civil society first.
This is a species of the old problem of feminism and other social movements - get trapped by the State or try and change society. Of course it’s not that simple.
However, and again this may be Gary’s argument, to do work in the world as an intellectual necessitates different modes of communication and action outside the academy per se. Foucault’s work on specific intellectuals may also be one of his reference points.
As I said, this raises some very interesting questions and I’m sorry that my only comment is so off the top of my head and rushed.
On April 27th, 2005 at 6:38 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
But I can’t “resist” replying to Glen quickly. The problem of seeing politics as any sort of ethic is that to reduce the political to the ethical empties it of susbtantive content and destroys agonism because ethical categories impose an apolitical set of values and privilege discussion over contestation. That’s foreign to the nature of the political, and our friends Messrs. Schmitt and Agamben make the same point. Max Weber is again instructive here - it’s a mistake to see politics as a matter of ethics - the true ethic of politics is one of taking a stand in favour of one’s own “warring god”.
Must dash - two job applications to write.
On April 27th, 2005 at 6:41 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
Arrggghhh, I really can’t resist. What Bush is doing is practicing politics. It’s about making distinctions and marking out borders which then produce corresponding identifications and actions. That’s what the political “is”.
For more, see my paper on Schmitt and the political.
Ok, sorry but having said, all that - I probably won’t have time to revisit this discussion. I’ll come back and read it though as it promises to be very interesting.
On April 27th, 2005 at 8:43 pm, Chris said:
I haven’t read Gary’s article but it basically makes sense to me, though is it news to anyone in the business that folks like Ian Hunter and Tony Bennett hold that Stuart Hall etc are mistaken in figuring the cultural studies project as fundamentally political and politicising? What seems to me more contentious is that this politics is fundamentally anti-Statist. That’s what the governmentalising neo-Foucauldians like Ian, Tony and Gary want us to think but it isn’t true to a great deal of cultural studies’ actual history. Here things get complicated since there are many cultural studies and many cultural studies histories, but once one includes feminism, queer, the new work on sentimentality nationality and affect etc into the field (much of which is now probably more important in the States than in the UK or Aussie), then the state is displaced from the centre of cultural studies politics. Indeed there is a case that cultural studies’s very condition of possibility as an academic field was the sixties loss of faith in the effectivity of state-centred politics.
On April 28th, 2005 at 12:02 am, Glen said:
Mark, on the issue of ethics, we are talking past each other I think, plus you _are_ a closet deleuzian… lol!
Bush as (the State) coding machine!
Capital ‘p’ Politics as the production of axiomatics!
Political ethic as becoming-majoritarian!
On April 28th, 2005 at 9:55 am, melgregg said:
Gosh thanks for the responses so far. What busy bees you’ve been overnight! Chris thanks for your thoughts in particular, which express much more eloquently some reservations I tried to indicate in my comments. How to approach a genealogy of the field that doesn’t acknowledge those versions of it I have found to be the most inspiring - feminist and queer theories, cultural geography, postcolonial and whiteness studies, not to mention audience research…? A serious appreciation of these aspects of cultural studies’ history would mean that the preferred site for politics endorsed in the article could not be maintained. For instance, it would be to recognise that feminism is not singular or coherent, with some pre-established set of objectives. I’m sorry Mark but ever since second year sociology class I’ve thought describing feminism and all those other ‘identity politics’ things as ’social movements’ sounded like an attempt to depotentialise what remain ongoing, and yes, political, agonisms.
So my larger reservation is that the category ‘ethical-must-be-moral’ could be, even unintentionally, a way of reinforcing long standing ways of dismissing other forms of political action - ones that, not incidentally, rely on corporeality, affect and embodied knowledges traditionally frowned upon by the academy.
To you other boys: argh! Please remember that Wickham does qualify his paper’s ambitions quite clearly and with the preface I mention in the original post. It’s interesting enough to begin tracing the history of thinking about the relationship between ethics, morality and politics, and the article does that well.
On April 28th, 2005 at 11:09 am, Mark Bahnisch said:
I think that’s putting too much weight on a word, Mel. The term “new social movements” originated with the French sociologist Alain Touraine. In French sociology - Bourdieu is another example - (and political discourse more generally) - “the social movement” (which we don’t really hear in English in the singular) refers to political movements which seek both to politicise society and also to orient politics to social rather than economic ends. The “old social movement” that Touraine contrasted phenomena like feminism with was the labour or union movement. Tne reasons why NSM were new related in part to their relation to state power (rarely affiliated to political parties, concentrating on the politics of social change) and in part to the fact that social cleavages and identifications came increasingly to be organised around points of differentiation other than those of class. The analysis was really an attempt to oppose Marxist class analysis and sprang directly out of “68 thought”.
So I don’t think it’s depoliticising. Obviously, something might be lost in translation between French sociology and an Australian second year sociology class, and probably more quantitative English-speaking sociology more generally.
There is a real sense in which all social movements live and breathe under the shadow of the State. To reject the aim of state power is to establish a relation with State power and to be wholly inserted within that discourse. A Foucauldian point, if you like.
In practice, as the history of feminism shows, there’s also a constant temptation towards a sort of State utopianism, and also a continuing tension between seeking social change through the structures of the State, and seeking to intervene in the social as opposed to the political. In this way, the public/private distinction rightly critiqued by feminists is both reinscribed and transgressed.
Any corporeal politics faces the same aporias - given that the construction of the body in late modern society is to such a large degree a function of a bio-politics which has the State as a central node.
Just as feminism is not “singular or coherent, with some pre-established set of objectives”, nor is the State. As Deleuzian or Foucauldian thinking on politics shows, as for that matter does Althusserian Marxism and the autopoetic Marxist State theory associated with Bob Jessop and the Regulationists.
I think in these cultural studies debates, a binary is set up between State and culture. Changing language as a political act must recognise that the State also changes its language, and this does work in the world. I think in privileging a certain form of political practice, the State is reified and essentialised. So it becomes the Leviathan in the room.
See, Glen, I am a closet Deleuzian?
On April 28th, 2005 at 4:43 pm, jean said:
Sorry to interrupt gentlemen, I’ll just quietly retrieve my jacket and sneak out of the room
On April 28th, 2005 at 8:57 pm, Chris said:
On Mark’s arguments in relation to the State. He claims, it seems to me, that all ’social movements’ (to stick with this rather clumsy term) have to be related to the State ultimately because to reject state power is “to establish a relation [to it] and to be wholly inserted in that discourse”. Crumbs. First, reject is a weasel word: it can mean actively to resist or simply to turn away from or even just not to be interested or involved in and which meaning is in question matters a great deal here; second to enter a relation to something cannot necessarily mean being ‘wholly inserted in that discourse” whatever that is. I may be getting this wrong but it looks to me as if. were to take Mark seriously, then pretty much no social action could avoid being either in complicity with or in resistance to the State because the State has some relation to almost all social activities and institutions. Maybe even a collective of Peanut’s comic strip fans would be engaged in state politics because comicbooks need state-approved ISBNs? And if they spend their time talking about Lucy and blankets and such then they’re resisting the state by not engaging it? It’s a ridiculous argument but it seems entailed by Mark’s line of thought. The thing is: if queers collectivise to speculate on and practice new kinds of affective and sexual relations and acts then that has a very different relation to the state than did Raymond Williams, say, in the days when he tried to build theories to usher in socialism. Any line of thought that lessens that kind of difference either has a particular agenda or is conceptually lead footed.
On April 28th, 2005 at 10:01 pm, Josh said:
Hang about Jean. Mel, I can’t agree with your comment more. I think the “ethical-must-be-moral” category functions exactly as you describe it, not only dismissing other forms of political action but reinforcing neat models of political activity by contextualising them as apparent and direct “resistance”. This results in a generalising from the margins that understands spectacular modes as direct reisistance to the core, producing the sort of situation Chris points out in the way Mark locates the State as an inescapable site of political engagement. As such, I have to agree with Mel’s suspicion of the reduction of ‘feminism’ and ‘identity politics’ to “social movements”. This reaffirms the binary, again locating the State as the only legitimate site for political activity and agency. Not only does it absent queer and feminist activities, but it conversely depoliticises the culutral activities of the mainstream by valorising resistance. Thus, it puts the weight on cultural activities to ‘be’ political in the same way it suggests that political action must engage with the State as a power bloc.
On April 28th, 2005 at 11:08 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
“pretty much no social action could avoid being either in complicity with or in resistance to the State because the State has some relation to almost all social activities and institutions.”
No - except in a very broad sense. That’s a caricature of my argument. Your conflating social movements
On April 28th, 2005 at 11:37 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
oops, sorry.
As I was saying, you’re conflating social movements and social interaction. The example of Peanuts is a reductio ad absurdum, and quite frankly is absurd. Some things - indeed anything - can be politicised, but it’s hard to see offhand how comic books could be. If however, a comic for kids were to feature a lesbian couple as parents, Dr Nelson et al would be screaming if it were in school libraries. There’d then be a relation to the State - it’s potential. That’s not to say it’s omnipresent.
It’s a mistake as well to see the State as a bloc. This is one of the canards of neo-Marxist state theory - which was demolished not just by Foucault but from within a Marxist position by Poulantzas. If you see State power as monolithic - either to be ignored, resisted or submitted to, then that’s how you trap yourself in a binary.
I have no idea what agenda I’m supposed to be pushing. So perhaps, then, Chris, I’m being “conceptually lead footed”. But I remain to be convinced of that.
As to the cultural practices of queer people, my friend Michael made the point on a thread recently that:
There are people around - Family Firstians and the like and people like Tony Abbott - who if they thought they could get away with it, would like to recriminalise queer sex. Have a look at what’s happening all over the US and tell me that queer practices are not the object of attention by the State.
Friends of mine, to their cost, have also suffered vicious and violent attacks for their queer cultural practices in public. To some degree again this is an illustration of the fact that subcultural practices do not exist in isolation, but in relation to a multiplicity of social and political power structures. There’s a clear and direct link between State-sanctioned homophobia and the subcultural practices of police (if you like) and suffering and death. Again, this is more stark in the US where hate crimes are rife and it’s part of the Republican agenda to actively resist seeing them as such.
I’m wholly in agreement with the slogan “get your laws off your bodies” and part of making it real is to act as if the laws themselves were irrelevant, but that doesn’t make them go away. That’s what I’m trying to get at - to argue that the State is not the only legitimate site for political activity and agency easily slips into the State doesn’t matter as a legitimate site for political activity.
I don’t at all argue that the State is an inescapable site of political engagement in the sense that any cultural practice is only political if it consciously sees itself in relation to the State. That’s a total misunderstanding of what I’m saying. My point rather is that the State is part of the political field, and while power may indeed be capillary, that doesn’t mean that all action has the same potential to achieve its ends. It’s a difference - in Spinozan terms if you like - between potential and power. Foucault distinguished between power and domination, and was well aware that domination is the archetypical model of State power. There is still space for resistance and power is still relational when domination is at work, but that space is incredibly narrow.
Josh writes:
This reaffirms the binary, again locating the State as the only legitimate site for political activity and agency. Not only does it absent queer and feminist activities, but it conversely depoliticises the culutral activities of the mainstream by valorising resistance. Thus, it puts the weight on cultural activities to ‘be’ political in the same way it suggests that political action must engage with the State as a power bloc.
I’m not quite sure if I’ve grasped the meaning of this, but I’m certainly not in the business of devalorising feminist and queer culture and politics. I don’t follow the logic, there, I’m afraid, and would be happy to be enlightened.
To take another example to make my point more concrete, Glen linked on his blog to a post on another blog about an attack made by Andrew Bolt on a commercial tv programme where the recent bod-mod conference at Macquarie was denigrated. It’s reasonable, eminently reasonable, particularly in light of things like the attacks on Negri’s right to speak at Sydney Uni and Nelson’s overturning of ARC Grant decisions last year, as well as the increasing intervention of DEST directly in curriculum and course decisions at universities, to suggest that such an intervention might lead down the track to all sorts of unwelcome consequences for people who want to do such work. The intellectual Right in Australia, as in the US, are practising their own Gramscianism in seeking to hegemonise academia. And in this the State is a very powerful actor. In my eight years of teaching in Universities, I saw people afraid to speak out. It’s now gone beyond budget cuts to direct and indirect policing of what people can research and teach and say, and it’s only going to get worse.
My political point is that if you ignore the State, it won’t go away.
Anyway, Chris - your comments seemed rather hostile. I don’t recognise what I wrote in what you wrote. If you think I’m pushing some sort of agenda, I’d prefer that you articulate that more openly so that I can respond. Potentially this could continue to be an interesting discussion but it might be helpful if some of the affect, if you like, were expressed.
But I have the feeling that both you and Josh have attributed to me views which I don’t hold and which aren’t actually there in what I’ve written.
But, hey, intention, author and all that!
On April 28th, 2005 at 11:43 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
Oh, I should add that I’m not particularly fond of the term “social movements’ myself. Part of what I was trying to do was clarify where it came from and from what sort of intellectual climate. I’m happy to be informed of an alternative and better term.
I should also clarify that I’m not trying to defend NSM theory per se, nor Gary’s article, which as I noted, I haven’t read for some years.
But I still do think there’s a Leviathan in the room.
On April 29th, 2005 at 1:52 am, sq said:
This all sounds complicated, although very interesting, and as a historian I like to simplify things and look backwards. So, let me (cautiously - as I have no authority in the CS world, as glen shall verify) take you back to your undergrad days … If you remember, in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatori Spivak makes an excellent critique of the “moral” pretence of Western intellectuals who claim to speak for the “disempowered” (although her targets are Foucault and friends). Moving on from Spivak scholars of transnationalism seem to be engaging with exactly the issues that you raise although, of course, their emphasis is different. I do think that you could draw from the critque made by Spivak to critically engage with the questions that you raise. In my readng, Spivak questions whether “We” can ethically claim to speak for the disempowered while invoking Western, liberal enlightenment traditions as the mode for intellectual thought. She contends that the thing that all of these scholars and academics seem to be missing is that “We” as intellectuals (CS theorists, historians, philosophers … but, of course, not her!) are telling the disempowered precisely how they are disempowered and we are invoked a “moral” and “ethical” discourse (directly or indirectly) to do so. In her argument that means that we are not actually listening but telling the disempowered what they want and “speaking” them. And, what’s so moral about that, she wonders …
On April 29th, 2005 at 9:44 am, Chris said:
I actually think there isnt much of an argument here: in the end everyone is pretty much on the same wavelength. Why do I say that? Because I dont get the sense that anyone would have major problems with the following propositions:
1. not all politics have a relation to the state, i.e. it is meaningful to talk about a politics of the personal or or affect or of everyday life which refer to practices that don’t connect to the state
2. those politics that do have a relation to the state tend to acquire more formal organaisational structures than those that dont
3. some acts have the potential to draw state attention (criminal sanctions, censorship, restriction of movement across state borders etc) but dont necessariy do so: these can, even if sometimes at a stretch, be thought of as political just because of that potential. (Genet thought of theft as political in something like this sense for instance)
4. the state enables as well as controls (this is an old idea, that Foucault’s notion of power reanimated)
5. cultural studies distinguishes itself from other academic fields by making the claim that it is to a greater degree than other disciplines, politically (in a broad sense of the word) engaged.
6. it is politically engaged from within a particular history and from a certain set of positions, namely those we think of as leftist, a term which covers a wide (indeed inconsistent) range of objectives, values and practices
I would add: terms like ‘morality’ ‘ethics’ are really red herrings in thinking these issues through.
On April 29th, 2005 at 10:53 am, Glen said:
lol! everyone gets very serious…
Hi sq! Dealing with the State as an institutional apparatus normally entails some form of representation, which is problematic in light of Spivak’s argument. ‘State’ here is a State power manifest and embodied in bureaucracies and filtered through media institutions… This is what I think Mark was calling the monolithic State??
To add to the above points from Chris:
1) Taking Faucault’s governmentality thesis on board we very well may have the ‘State’ running through our veins right now due to our biopolitical constitution.
1b) The withdrawal of the State from running bureaucracies and our exposure to privatised ‘public’ enterprises. So they are still governmental (for example, insurance companies), but they are not representations of the ‘State’. These are going to have to be engaged with at some point…
2) Brett’s paper on the argument between Agamben and Negri over ‘constituted power’ versus ‘constituting power’ (potential) is interesting.
3) Josh raises the problem of ‘resistance’ having to signify ‘politicalness’ for it to be taken as ‘political’. I agree this is problematic when acts or events may not be explicitly ‘political’, in the sense of trying to bring about political ends, but may be politicised (TJ Hickey event) or stem from stem from other problems that should be politicised (MacqFields riots).
Ok, to return to Mel’s original post.
Anyone see the new Hitchhikers Guide yet? Cult Stud intellectuals are the anti-Vogons of the universe! haha! Yeah!
It is patently absurd to suggest that there is such a thing as a ‘cultural studies intellectual’ that is not a number of other subject positions at the same time. I think I agree with Wickham’s (rhetorical) point that somebody who was a (pure) cult studs intellectual would never be able to work within the State or any other governmental apparatus. Indeed, but I can certainly mix with governmental types (eg road safety people). I just occupy a slightly different subject position and speak in a such a manner that uses simpler words (and less swearing;).
Surely what Wickham needs to also separate (beyond the multiplicity that is the subjectivity of the cult studs intellectual (or postgrad!)) are the different modes of academic practice and the forms that such practices take when engaging with the State or other governmental institutions.
Mark, it seems to me that you are arguing for a form of politics derived from a contestation over who ‘owns’ the hegemonic order, yes? Are you suggesting that cult studs people are useless in this regard because we seem to run around saying “Hegemonic order is bad, mm’kay?” no? and then we discover all these other contestations that distracts us from the ‘real’ task at hand because they seemingly pale in comparison to the hegemonic title fight, yes?
On April 29th, 2005 at 11:55 am, Mark Bahnisch said:
No, not necessarily, Glen - my intention wasn’t to engage in polemics. I certainly don’t disagree with the points Chris made in the penultimate comment.
On April 29th, 2005 at 12:19 pm, Mark Bahnisch said:
I will say - and perhaps this is a reasonable inference from the bits of Gary’s article Mel quoted - that governmentality isn’t limited to the State - though it’s easy to see how you could think that from what Gary is writing about in the specific context. The more interesting aspect of governmentality work (and some of it isn’t interesting at all!) is the way that we are incited to constitute our own selves as subjects of “freedom” in the late modern order and the inclusions and exclusions that this sort of constitution of subjectivity sets up.
The work of Nikolas Rose is very good on this.
Glen, you’ll be happy to hear he draws heavily on Deleuze in his recent publications!
On April 29th, 2005 at 2:00 pm, melgregg said:
Glen, I saw HitchHikers Guide last night! It was v good - even tho I haven’t read the books I still enjoyed it (and get your joke). Recommend it to anyone who, like me, needs to get their head out of this world for a few hours
On April 29th, 2005 at 2:30 pm, jean said:
Can nobody see the irony of this comment thread in light of the concluding sentence of Mel’s post?
a mode of intervention that takes the form of attacking academic conventions (precisely ‘the writing and arguing styles, the manner of speaking in the classroom and at conferences’ Wickham mentions, which I argue are symptomatic of a wider structure of power and inequality) can’t be recognised in this schema.