Three theses on ‘governance’ and the political

Prozorov, Sergei

doi:10.1057/palgrave.jird.1800023

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Alternatives to governmentality theories', 'sanitized account' of power and resistance in international politics have recently been articulated in a body of literature that, inspired by Giorgio Agamben, focuses on the connections between sovereignty and biopolitics. This literature presents conceptualizations of power that emphasize domination and violence, and conceives of resistance as refusal and 'dispossession' (Edkins et al 2004;Prozorov 2004Prozorov , 2007. While both governmentality theories and the sovereignty-biopolitics literature 4 claim to rely on Foucault, their conceptualizations of power and resistance are radically divergent.…”

Section: Power and Resistance: The Structure Of Human Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Biopolitics-sovereignty scholars, relying on Giorgio Agamben's (1998) reading of Foucault, move away from understandings of power as an agonic, contingent and reversible structure of human interactions. Power is patterned along the metaphor of sovereignty, and the focus shifts from strategic interaction to domination (Edkins et al 2004;Prozorov 2004Prozorov , 2007. 7 Agamben (1998) sees the Nazi concentration camp as the paradigm of modern power, where the coupling of sovereignty and biopolitics produces violent and totalizing effects.…”

Section: Power and Resistance: The Structure Of Human Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prozorov envisages two ways out of the totalizing inscriptions of liberal power. On the one hand, building on Schmitt, Prozorov situates the exit point in the sovereign act of decision on exceptions through which the foundation of political order is established (Prozorov 2004). 8 On the other hand, he identifies resistance as 'bottom up' individual acts of total rejection of the inscriptions of biopolitics (Prozorov 2007).…”

Section: Power and Resistance: The Structure Of Human Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a new end of history is envisaged, both power (conceptualized along the lines of sovereignty) and the autonomous rational individual become the referents for grand narratives of oppression and liberation, and universal prescriptions for reaching freedom. Not surprisingly, for Prozorov, governmentality studies are a mere redescription of liberal discourses of governance: 'because they do not foresee an opening onto the exterior of the diagram [of power] they do not have much to say about the problematic of resistance' (Prozorov 2004). Prozorov's conceptualizations of resistance and liberation remain trapped into understandings of power as capacity and legitimacy in a relation of externality with the subject.…”

Section: Power and Resistance: The Structure Of Human Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Normalizing democracy and human rights: discipline, resistance and carceralization in Croatia's Euro-Atlantic integration

Zanotti

2008

J Int Relat Dev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper explores the mechanisms of governance put in place by international organizations in the process of the pacification and Europeanization of Croatia, and the local administrations' strategies of resistance. In Croatia, international organizations enacted processes of subjectification organized around idioms of democracy and human rights, and deployed disciplinary and governmental methods for monitoring, transforming and steering the state's behaviour. These practices also inscribed spaces of resistance that have been used by different local governmental constituencies to accommodate, contest or hijack international agendas. This paper provides insights on how international regimes of practices in the post-Cold War era operate through isomorphic but decentralized normalizing processes. In doing so, it traces out the interaction between these regimes and local actors. Relying on governmentality theories, this paper also provides empirical support for conceptualizations of power as the structure of human interactions, and of resistance as strategic transformative action. Critiques of governmentality, inspired by Agamben, conceptualized power as domination, and resistance as total rejection of its inscriptions. The case of Croatia shows that international normalizing regimes of practices do not produce totalizing effects of domination, but regimes of carceralization that are always met with resistance. International regimes elicit the proliferation and intensification of mechanisms for monitoring, assessing and steering behaviour. However, the effect of these regimes is not the obliteration of political life. Instead, normalization opens spaces for continuously renovated modalities of resistance. Finally, this paper questions romanticized representations of 'resistance' as a path to 'liberation'. The political effects of power and resistance are ambiguous, and need to be explored in their contingent interactions.

show abstract

Section: Power and Resistance: The Structure Of Human Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Power and Resistance: The Structure Of Human Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Power and Resistance: The Structure Of Human Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Power and Resistance: The Structure Of Human Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Normalizing democracy and human rights: discipline, resistance and carceralization in Croatia's Euro-Atlantic integration

Zanotti

2008

J Int Relat Dev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A variety of scholars have focused on the relation between the views of Foucault and Schmitt (Catlaw, 2007;Dean, 2004;Newswander, in press;Ojakangas, 2001;Prozorov, 2004). In particular, Dean showed how "Schmitt names and provides a genealogy of the international order which frames Foucault's lineage of domestic arts of government" (2004, p. 44).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Emergence of Partisans and Terrorists

Newswander

2011

Administrative Theory & Praxis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The changing status and capacity of enemies of the state play an important role in the evolution of the securitization of the state. Examining how enemies of the state mold state action, this article uses Foucault's concern with governmentality and Schmitt's theory of the partisan to describe how and where agencies have begun to manage closed and open spaces. From this administrative angle, the interplay between these two ideas sheds light on how administrators devise disciplinary and security-based measures. This article more fully describes the dynamic of how administrators have countered active threats by constructing closed spaces designed to discipline and operating in open spaces designed to exclude. The execution and interaction of extending mechanisms of control and calculation to closed and open spaces not only provide enhanced protection but also threaten the fruition of constitutional and democratic values in the twenty-first century.

show abstract

The narratives of exclusion and self-exclusion in the Russian conflict discourse on EU–Russian Relations

Prozorov

2007

Political Geography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Three theses on ‘governance’ and the political

Cited by 17 publications

References 58 publications

Normalizing democracy and human rights: discipline, resistance and carceralization in Croatia's Euro-Atlantic integration

Normalizing democracy and human rights: discipline, resistance and carceralization in Croatia's Euro-Atlantic integration

The Emergence of Partisans and Terrorists

The narratives of exclusion and self-exclusion in the Russian conflict discourse on EU–Russian Relations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About