Abstract: (11777 Views)
Why is state, and in a broader view, political system or government, responsible for directing and governing individuals' conduct "both in individual and species level"? And how it accomplishes this "will of governing"? The answers to these questions appear to be different based on our way of perceiving categories such as government, power, or their due relation to the subject. The perspective design of "governmentality" by Foucault could be taken as inception of a new domain in which the triplet categories of government, power and subject are interrelated. It is shown in this perspective that how government's reluctance in using mere violence and, at the meantime, willing to govern people through it will inevitably make subjectification as the sole possible answer to the particular epistemological horizon of the governmentality problematic; an answer, which in form, on the one hand, multiplicities all government arts and, appears as multiplying all government institutions on the other. The form of conceptualizing how power operates, not only explains blurring of boundaries between persuasion and consent during the governmentalization of individuals to create desired subjects, but also it denies “the participation of desire in repressing itself”.
Published: 2012/04/14