Jacopo Martire
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474411929
- eISBN:
- 9781474435215
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411929.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
Although Foucault is certainly one of most influential scholars of our age, law is for Foucauldian scholarship akin to an “undigestable meal”. This is due to a seemingly unresolvable dilemma: how is ...
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Although Foucault is certainly one of most influential scholars of our age, law is for Foucauldian scholarship akin to an “undigestable meal”. This is due to a seemingly unresolvable dilemma: how is it possible to analyse law through Foucauldian lenses if Foucault himself claimed (albeit cursorily) that law, in modernity, has been colonised by other disciplines and ousted from the locus of power? Building on Foucault’s ideas about power, freedom, and subjectivity, the present book tackles this problem through a critical genealogy of the philosophico-political ideas at the basis of modern law, delineating the historical emergence of the implicit regulative conditions of our legal present. The book proposes that modern law and modern forms of power – which Foucault termed biopolitical because they sort, train, and tame persons and populations with the aim of normalizing society – developed symbiotically and that, to the extent that modern law establishes the existence of a universal legal subject, law’s functioning is made possible by the homogenization of society through normalising practices. We are however fast moving towards the absolute limit of this normalizing complex. As normalising strategies are progressively unable to homogenise a social body which is increasingly composed by “fluid” subjects, modern law faces two interconnected challenges – a normative one (how can normalizing laws properly reflect the wills of a mass of differentiated fluid individuals?) and a functional one (how can normalizing laws effectively regulate such new protean social body?) – which put into question the very foundations of our legal discourse.Less
Although Foucault is certainly one of most influential scholars of our age, law is for Foucauldian scholarship akin to an “undigestable meal”. This is due to a seemingly unresolvable dilemma: how is it possible to analyse law through Foucauldian lenses if Foucault himself claimed (albeit cursorily) that law, in modernity, has been colonised by other disciplines and ousted from the locus of power? Building on Foucault’s ideas about power, freedom, and subjectivity, the present book tackles this problem through a critical genealogy of the philosophico-political ideas at the basis of modern law, delineating the historical emergence of the implicit regulative conditions of our legal present. The book proposes that modern law and modern forms of power – which Foucault termed biopolitical because they sort, train, and tame persons and populations with the aim of normalizing society – developed symbiotically and that, to the extent that modern law establishes the existence of a universal legal subject, law’s functioning is made possible by the homogenization of society through normalising practices. We are however fast moving towards the absolute limit of this normalizing complex. As normalising strategies are progressively unable to homogenise a social body which is increasingly composed by “fluid” subjects, modern law faces two interconnected challenges – a normative one (how can normalizing laws properly reflect the wills of a mass of differentiated fluid individuals?) and a functional one (how can normalizing laws effectively regulate such new protean social body?) – which put into question the very foundations of our legal discourse.
Saida Hodzic
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520291980
- eISBN:
- 9780520965577
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520291980.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
Departing from common treatment of female genital cutting as an African problem to be debated within Western moral and critical publics, this book examines how Ghanaians problematize and materialize ...
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Departing from common treatment of female genital cutting as an African problem to be debated within Western moral and critical publics, this book examines how Ghanaians problematize and materialize cutting as an African concern in which Western reason and governmentality have been implicated since colonialism. It examines the genealogies of activist and governmental efforts to end cutting (including feminist, public health, and legal interventions and cultural reforms) and the forms of rule, subjectivity, and positioning they produce. It attends to the social concerns and ethical dilemmas of women and men who have been most engaged in and affected by them. Ghanaian opposition to NGOs does not take the shape in the continuation of the practice, as they accommodate NGO platforms, but critique what they leave unaddressed. They question extractive governance that takes without giving and disidentify with the legal rationality of sovereign violence that punishes without caring. They desire governance based on ethics of relationality and mutual responsibility.
This ethnography challenges and reinvigorates anthropological and feminist theories about neoliberal punitive rationality and feminist love of law, efficacy and unintended consequences of NGO interventions, minimalist biopolitics of saving lives, and postcolonial abandonment in the postcolonial world. It also charts a path for working against the analytical and political common sense by cultivating sensibilities on the basis of disidentification and immanent critique.Less
Departing from common treatment of female genital cutting as an African problem to be debated within Western moral and critical publics, this book examines how Ghanaians problematize and materialize cutting as an African concern in which Western reason and governmentality have been implicated since colonialism. It examines the genealogies of activist and governmental efforts to end cutting (including feminist, public health, and legal interventions and cultural reforms) and the forms of rule, subjectivity, and positioning they produce. It attends to the social concerns and ethical dilemmas of women and men who have been most engaged in and affected by them. Ghanaian opposition to NGOs does not take the shape in the continuation of the practice, as they accommodate NGO platforms, but critique what they leave unaddressed. They question extractive governance that takes without giving and disidentify with the legal rationality of sovereign violence that punishes without caring. They desire governance based on ethics of relationality and mutual responsibility.
This ethnography challenges and reinvigorates anthropological and feminist theories about neoliberal punitive rationality and feminist love of law, efficacy and unintended consequences of NGO interventions, minimalist biopolitics of saving lives, and postcolonial abandonment in the postcolonial world. It also charts a path for working against the analytical and political common sense by cultivating sensibilities on the basis of disidentification and immanent critique.
Nicola Ansell, Flora Hajdu, Elsbeth Robson, Lorraine Van Blerk, and Elodie Marandet
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781847428462
- eISBN:
- 9781447307259
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781847428462.003.0003
- Subject:
- Social Work, Children and Families
Over the past few decades governments worldwide have developed youth policies, encompassing diverse measures to address the problems and potentials of their younger populations. These policies have ...
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Over the past few decades governments worldwide have developed youth policies, encompassing diverse measures to address the problems and potentials of their younger populations. These policies have not emerged independently in diverse countries; intergovernmental organisations and international discourses are involved. In this chapter we use Foucault's concepts of governmentality and biopower to analyse a UNESCO (2004) publication designed to guide youth policy development, and the recently formulated youth policies of Malawi and Lesotho. We examine how youth policies perform as technologies of power, enabling states to exercise control over individuals and populations; and how such technologies produce individual subjects that are valuable to neoliberal economies. More significantly, we investigate whether youth policies represent a form of transnational governmentality through which the agendas of global capital contribute to the production of neoliberal subjects for a globalising market. We show that while this is, to an extent, true, the transnational exercise of power is far from all-encompassing, and we conclude by emphasising the unevenness and incompleteness of the exercise of neoliberalising power through youth policies in these two countries.Less
Over the past few decades governments worldwide have developed youth policies, encompassing diverse measures to address the problems and potentials of their younger populations. These policies have not emerged independently in diverse countries; intergovernmental organisations and international discourses are involved. In this chapter we use Foucault's concepts of governmentality and biopower to analyse a UNESCO (2004) publication designed to guide youth policy development, and the recently formulated youth policies of Malawi and Lesotho. We examine how youth policies perform as technologies of power, enabling states to exercise control over individuals and populations; and how such technologies produce individual subjects that are valuable to neoliberal economies. More significantly, we investigate whether youth policies represent a form of transnational governmentality through which the agendas of global capital contribute to the production of neoliberal subjects for a globalising market. We show that while this is, to an extent, true, the transnational exercise of power is far from all-encompassing, and we conclude by emphasising the unevenness and incompleteness of the exercise of neoliberalising power through youth policies in these two countries.
Gay Hawkins, Emily Potter, and Kane Race
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029414
- eISBN:
- 9780262329521
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029414.003.0008
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Environmental Studies
This chapter examines the ways in which bottled water manufacturers work to redeem and positively reposition bottled water in the face of public attack and market contestation. It discusses ...
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This chapter examines the ways in which bottled water manufacturers work to redeem and positively reposition bottled water in the face of public attack and market contestation. It discusses techniques of ‘ethicalisation’, particularly ethical branding and cause-related marketing. These techniques are employed to re-qualify bottled water as a force for good particularly amongst various communities of ‘need’. The ethicalisation activities of one Australian bottled water brand, Mount Franklin, are analysed in detail. These activities range from cause-related marketing such as associating bottled water with breast cancer research and environmental advocacy, to more complex interventions into remote Indigenous Australian communities where uneven access to cool safe water and consumption of sugary drinks were causing major health problems. In these communities the company ran a ‘Choose Water’ campaign to encourage bottled water consumption as a healthy alternative. This was both a PR strategy and an act of governmentality.Less
This chapter examines the ways in which bottled water manufacturers work to redeem and positively reposition bottled water in the face of public attack and market contestation. It discusses techniques of ‘ethicalisation’, particularly ethical branding and cause-related marketing. These techniques are employed to re-qualify bottled water as a force for good particularly amongst various communities of ‘need’. The ethicalisation activities of one Australian bottled water brand, Mount Franklin, are analysed in detail. These activities range from cause-related marketing such as associating bottled water with breast cancer research and environmental advocacy, to more complex interventions into remote Indigenous Australian communities where uneven access to cool safe water and consumption of sugary drinks were causing major health problems. In these communities the company ran a ‘Choose Water’ campaign to encourage bottled water consumption as a healthy alternative. This was both a PR strategy and an act of governmentality.
Ewan Ferlie, Louise Fitzgerald, Gerry McGivern, Sue Dopson, and Chris Bennett
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199603015
- eISBN:
- 9780191752995
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199603015.001.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Public Management
This book characterizes the nature of key reforms—namely managed networks—introduced in the UK National Health Service during the New Labour period (1997–2010). It combines rich empirical case ...
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This book characterizes the nature of key reforms—namely managed networks—introduced in the UK National Health Service during the New Labour period (1997–2010). It combines rich empirical case material of eight such networks drawn from different health policy arenas with a theoretically informed analysis. It makes three main contributions. First, it argues that New Labour’s reforms included an important network element consistent with underlying network governance ideas, complementing the interpretation of other authors who have stressed either choice and markets or the continuation of NPM. It contributes to the wider NPM/post NPM debate by suggesting conditions of sedimentation. It specifies conditions of ‘success’ for these managed networks and explores how much progress was empirically evident. Second, the concept of ‘wicked problems’ is used to conceptualize many of the complex health policy arenas studied. It argues that networks are the least bad governance mode to tackle such wicked problems. Wicked problems conditions may become even more important in the future. It offers a qualified defence of network forms and caution against a whole-scale tilt to marketization in ‘wicked problem’ arenas. Third, it brings in a governmentality perspective to retheorize some of the novel organizational processes which do not fit either professional dominance or NPM models. A number of long-run policy developments under New Labour (such as clinical governance, EBM guidelines, energized clinical and managerial hybrids, patient safety regimes) appear consistent with this governmentality perspective.Less
This book characterizes the nature of key reforms—namely managed networks—introduced in the UK National Health Service during the New Labour period (1997–2010). It combines rich empirical case material of eight such networks drawn from different health policy arenas with a theoretically informed analysis. It makes three main contributions. First, it argues that New Labour’s reforms included an important network element consistent with underlying network governance ideas, complementing the interpretation of other authors who have stressed either choice and markets or the continuation of NPM. It contributes to the wider NPM/post NPM debate by suggesting conditions of sedimentation. It specifies conditions of ‘success’ for these managed networks and explores how much progress was empirically evident. Second, the concept of ‘wicked problems’ is used to conceptualize many of the complex health policy arenas studied. It argues that networks are the least bad governance mode to tackle such wicked problems. Wicked problems conditions may become even more important in the future. It offers a qualified defence of network forms and caution against a whole-scale tilt to marketization in ‘wicked problem’ arenas. Third, it brings in a governmentality perspective to retheorize some of the novel organizational processes which do not fit either professional dominance or NPM models. A number of long-run policy developments under New Labour (such as clinical governance, EBM guidelines, energized clinical and managerial hybrids, patient safety regimes) appear consistent with this governmentality perspective.
Bernhard Siegert
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263752
- eISBN:
- 9780823268962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263752.003.0006
- Subject:
- Information Science, Communications
This chapter describes the cultural techniques of interrogation, registration, and licensing on the boundary between land and sea, that produced in sixteenth century Spain the legal passenger to “The ...
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This chapter describes the cultural techniques of interrogation, registration, and licensing on the boundary between land and sea, that produced in sixteenth century Spain the legal passenger to “The Indies” in contrast to the illegal passenger, the vagabond, the parasite. The invention of a bureaucratical apparatus and notational techniques of state control over the migration of individuals across the border between Europa and America, land and sea, made those who otherwise would have disappeared without a trace into historical darkness speak of themselves. The chapter analyzes the discourse of the interrogations of witnesses, the petitions of the passengers, and the passenger registers in the Archive General de Indias in Seville, and demonstrates how the bureaucratic procedures that produce the legal passenger prdicue at the same time the problematic difference between fact and fiction, truth and fake. It demonstrates, too, how closely the problem of distinguishing between fact and fiction in the registers and the problem of producing fictitious identities by what Foucault called governmentality is connected to the early modern problem of distinguishing between true and false poor and the emergence of a discourse on a parasitic ecomomy of false beggars and vagabonds.Less
This chapter describes the cultural techniques of interrogation, registration, and licensing on the boundary between land and sea, that produced in sixteenth century Spain the legal passenger to “The Indies” in contrast to the illegal passenger, the vagabond, the parasite. The invention of a bureaucratical apparatus and notational techniques of state control over the migration of individuals across the border between Europa and America, land and sea, made those who otherwise would have disappeared without a trace into historical darkness speak of themselves. The chapter analyzes the discourse of the interrogations of witnesses, the petitions of the passengers, and the passenger registers in the Archive General de Indias in Seville, and demonstrates how the bureaucratic procedures that produce the legal passenger prdicue at the same time the problematic difference between fact and fiction, truth and fake. It demonstrates, too, how closely the problem of distinguishing between fact and fiction in the registers and the problem of producing fictitious identities by what Foucault called governmentality is connected to the early modern problem of distinguishing between true and false poor and the emergence of a discourse on a parasitic ecomomy of false beggars and vagabonds.
Jacopo Martire
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474411929
- eISBN:
- 9781474435215
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411929.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
In the first chapter, the author provides a picture of the current state of contemporary Foucauldian interpretations of law. The author claims that Foucauldian scholars – notwithstanding recent ...
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In the first chapter, the author provides a picture of the current state of contemporary Foucauldian interpretations of law. The author claims that Foucauldian scholars – notwithstanding recent important contributions – have not been able to properly debunk the thesis that Foucault “expelled” law from the locus of power. The author proposes to overcome this impasse by considering law as a proper sui generis apparatus of subjectivation and by undertaking a geneaology of the modern discourse of law in order to discover its generative syntax. The author’s goal is to demonstrate that in developing towards its modern form, law moved from being an order based upon the paradigm of sovereign commands to one based on the paradigm of socially constructed norms (understood in a Foucauldian way). The author identifies the formal features of generality, abstraction, and the substantive features of equality and freedom as key for this purpose.Less
In the first chapter, the author provides a picture of the current state of contemporary Foucauldian interpretations of law. The author claims that Foucauldian scholars – notwithstanding recent important contributions – have not been able to properly debunk the thesis that Foucault “expelled” law from the locus of power. The author proposes to overcome this impasse by considering law as a proper sui generis apparatus of subjectivation and by undertaking a geneaology of the modern discourse of law in order to discover its generative syntax. The author’s goal is to demonstrate that in developing towards its modern form, law moved from being an order based upon the paradigm of sovereign commands to one based on the paradigm of socially constructed norms (understood in a Foucauldian way). The author identifies the formal features of generality, abstraction, and the substantive features of equality and freedom as key for this purpose.
Bülent Diken
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748682973
- eISBN:
- 9781474406475
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748682973.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The article discusses post-politics in relation to the contemporary ‘return’ of religion. I start with considering some of the paradoxes that are visible in the horizon of post-political society. The ...
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The article discusses post-politics in relation to the contemporary ‘return’ of religion. I start with considering some of the paradoxes that are visible in the horizon of post-political society. The pivot around which this discussion is organized is the sovereignty-governmentality-visibility nexus. In this context I am especially interested in the relationship between sovereignty and governmentality, which takes the form of a disjunctive synthesis. Then, to articulate the religious motives that are constitutive of this paradoxical relationship, I turn to political and economic theology. To end with, I discuss capitalism as religion, linking this back to the concept of post-politics.Less
The article discusses post-politics in relation to the contemporary ‘return’ of religion. I start with considering some of the paradoxes that are visible in the horizon of post-political society. The pivot around which this discussion is organized is the sovereignty-governmentality-visibility nexus. In this context I am especially interested in the relationship between sovereignty and governmentality, which takes the form of a disjunctive synthesis. Then, to articulate the religious motives that are constitutive of this paradoxical relationship, I turn to political and economic theology. To end with, I discuss capitalism as religion, linking this back to the concept of post-politics.
Alex Loftus
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748682973
- eISBN:
- 9781474406475
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748682973.003.0012
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter interrogates Chantal Mouffe’s discussion of cosmopolitanism and multipolar order with reference to the global governance projects of the European Union (EU) and the BRICS (Brazil, ...
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This chapter interrogates Chantal Mouffe’s discussion of cosmopolitanism and multipolar order with reference to the global governance projects of the European Union (EU) and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group. Prima facie, the EU’s commitment to a post-sovereign world of multilateral cooperation contrasts with BRICS’ call for a multipolar world order, much like cosmopolitanism and multipolarity in Mouffe’s analysis. Taking an agonistic and pluralist perspective, Mouffe criticizes cosmopolitanism for depoliticizing global governance and advocates a multipolar world order giving due recognition to competing political aspirations and identities as an alternative. Drawing on Foucauldian governmentality analysis and Jacques Rancière’s political theory, this paper deconstructs Mouffe’s position and develops an alternative agonistic approach. In a first move, it challenges the ostensible opposition between the EU’s cosmopolitanism and BRICS’ multipolar approach by highlighting the EU’s cosmopolitan ‘ambiguities’ and BRICS’ ‘bricolage(s)’ of governmentalities beyond multipolarity. In a second move, it suggests that Rancière’s conception of a politics of equality that creates political subjects through ‘disagreement’ provides a more promising avenue than Mouffe’s multipolar approach to theorize the political in the BRICS-EU dyad.Less
This chapter interrogates Chantal Mouffe’s discussion of cosmopolitanism and multipolar order with reference to the global governance projects of the European Union (EU) and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group. Prima facie, the EU’s commitment to a post-sovereign world of multilateral cooperation contrasts with BRICS’ call for a multipolar world order, much like cosmopolitanism and multipolarity in Mouffe’s analysis. Taking an agonistic and pluralist perspective, Mouffe criticizes cosmopolitanism for depoliticizing global governance and advocates a multipolar world order giving due recognition to competing political aspirations and identities as an alternative. Drawing on Foucauldian governmentality analysis and Jacques Rancière’s political theory, this paper deconstructs Mouffe’s position and develops an alternative agonistic approach. In a first move, it challenges the ostensible opposition between the EU’s cosmopolitanism and BRICS’ multipolar approach by highlighting the EU’s cosmopolitan ‘ambiguities’ and BRICS’ ‘bricolage(s)’ of governmentalities beyond multipolarity. In a second move, it suggests that Rancière’s conception of a politics of equality that creates political subjects through ‘disagreement’ provides a more promising avenue than Mouffe’s multipolar approach to theorize the political in the BRICS-EU dyad.
Sergei Prozorov
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781474410526
- eISBN:
- 9781474418744
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410526.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Chapter 2 provides a theoretical introduction to the study, addressing the puzzling status of Soviet socialism more generally in the canonical theories of biopolitics, where it has been largely ...
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Chapter 2 provides a theoretical introduction to the study, addressing the puzzling status of Soviet socialism more generally in the canonical theories of biopolitics, where it has been largely ignored at the expense of liberalism and Nazism. We address the scant dossier of the remarks on Soviet biopolitics by the three key authors in the field – Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito. We begin with Foucault’s influential move of subsuming Soviet biopolitics under Western rationalities of government, rejecting the existence of anything like a properly socialist governmentality of life. We then proceed to Agamben’s theory of biopolitics, which was produced at the time of the collapse of the USSR and was understandably less interested in the socialist case. Agamben’s famous claim about the ‘inner solidarity’ of democracy and totalitarianism in biopolitical terms leads him to deny any specificity to the Soviet case. Finally, we address Esposito’s attempt to differentiate between totalitarianism and biopolitics as two paradigms for grasping the 20th century. In the conclusion we propose to approach the question of socialist biopolitics by addressing the problematization of life at work within the governmental rationality of Stalinism: how does life function in the mode of political reasoning that defines the Stalinist project?Less
Chapter 2 provides a theoretical introduction to the study, addressing the puzzling status of Soviet socialism more generally in the canonical theories of biopolitics, where it has been largely ignored at the expense of liberalism and Nazism. We address the scant dossier of the remarks on Soviet biopolitics by the three key authors in the field – Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito. We begin with Foucault’s influential move of subsuming Soviet biopolitics under Western rationalities of government, rejecting the existence of anything like a properly socialist governmentality of life. We then proceed to Agamben’s theory of biopolitics, which was produced at the time of the collapse of the USSR and was understandably less interested in the socialist case. Agamben’s famous claim about the ‘inner solidarity’ of democracy and totalitarianism in biopolitical terms leads him to deny any specificity to the Soviet case. Finally, we address Esposito’s attempt to differentiate between totalitarianism and biopolitics as two paradigms for grasping the 20th century. In the conclusion we propose to approach the question of socialist biopolitics by addressing the problematization of life at work within the governmental rationality of Stalinism: how does life function in the mode of political reasoning that defines the Stalinist project?
