A Democracy is Being Beaten

Abstract

I. Introducing Liberal Excess My consideration of liberal guilt and shame begins with of Biopolitics, where Michel Foucault initially defines liberal thought as principle and as method of rationalizing activity of governing human behaviour framework of, and by means of, state institutions. It is, in this emerging moment, that obeys--and this is its specificity--the internal rule of economy (Foucault, Birth 74). Foucault subsequently observes that, in course of its history, liberal thought breaks with rationalization of government as reason of state, an end in itself, and as such: Liberal thought starts not from existence of state, seeing in government means for attaining that end it would be for itself, but rather from society, which is in complex relation of exteriority and interiority with respect to Society, as both precondition and final end, is what enables one to no longer ask question: How can one govern as much as possible and at least possible cost? Instead, question becomes: Why must one govern? In other words, what makes it necessary for there to be government, and what ends should it pursue with regard to in order to justify its existence? The idea of enables technology of government to be developed based on principle that it itself is already too much, excess--or at least that it is added on as supplement which can and must always be questioned as to its necessity and its usefulness. (75) (1) Based on this definition, Foucault foregrounds liberalism's threefold function as a tool for criticizing reality: (1) of previous governmentality that one tries to shed; (2) of current governmentality that one attempts to reform and rationalize by stripping it down; (3) of governmentality that one opposes and whose abuses one tries to limit (75). There are two elements in this definition that I want to foreground as departure point for consideration of liberal-democratic formation and, specifically, role of guilt and shame within it. The first concerns Foucault's abstract observation about society as a complex relation of exteriority and interiority with respect to state. Society, so defined, would function at once as precondition and end of liberal criticism, which aims to demarcate it from state that encroaches on dignity of individuals. The state is hereby envisioned as kind of political that ignores individuals, looking only at interests of totality or [...] of class or group among citizens (Subject 332). Yet as Foucault underlines, the state's (and that is one of reasons for its strength) is both an individualizing and totalizing form of power (332). In Subject and Power, Foucault distances himself from liberal opposition between and state by insisting that [p]ower relations are rooted in whole network of social (345). This stance supports view of socialization that Foucault puts forward in Discipline and Punish, where he argues that microphysical networks of disciplinary across various intersecting domains produce visibility for subjects that compels them to internalize their own surveillance. The modern is here conceived on model of prisoner in Panopticon. As Judith Butler notes, subject's soul is figured as itself as kind of spatial captivity, indeed, as kind of prison, which provides form or regulatory principle of prisoner's body (Psychic Life 85). Hence boundary that divides outside from inside, or governmentality from individuation, is process of being installed, precisely through regulation of subject (67). By implication, task of managing population as an object and vehicle of maximum economy will be to make exterior coercion of administration into interior of subject. …