Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Rose and Miller write in the conclusion to their article that the central point is a simple one.They phrase it as follows:The language of political philosophy: state and civil society, freedom and constraint, sovereignty and democracy, public and private plays a key role in the organization of modern political power.However, it cannot provide intellectual tools for analysing the problematics of government in the present.Unless we adopt different ways of thinking about the exercise of political power, we will find contemporary forms of rule hard to understand.It will thus be difficult to make proper judgment of the alternatives on offer (Rose and Miller 2010 [1992]: 298-9 [201]).Two decades on from the publication of the article, this judgment on the failings of 'political philosophy' is as apt as it originally was.Its language has not been able to comprehend the 'problematics of government' in the present.I would add that neither has it been able to adequately comprehend governance in the past.That political philosophy is now less influential than it once was is testimony to the persuasive power of Rose and Miller's's tour de force.That it is nevertheless still so strong is equal testimony to the hold that traditional categories of thought continue to have, one to be explained precisely by the fact that they are 'traditional', part of an inherited 'common sense' evident far beyond the academy alone.The circumstances of the article's writing need to be recalled.Rose and Miller were responding to a very real and rapidly developing neo-liberal 'problematics of government' in the 1980s, something especially evident in Britain and the USA.In a sense it was a critique of these new 'contemporary forms of rule', for it certainly showed how political programmes and ideals proposed as natural and self-evident were in fact composed of political rationalities and technologies whose business it was to govern populations, in short
Source: British Journal of Sociology
Author: Patrick Joyce
Language: English
Topic: Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,840
OpenAlex ID: W1501476556