A homo calculator at large: Reading the late work of Foucault in the light of Ivan Vladislavić's “Villa Toscana”

Abstract

Summary This essay takes the form of a reading of Foucault's late work on the subject and power, particularly that concerned with the technologies of self, and the implications this work has for an understanding of the relationship between questions of government and those of self‐government in modernity. Focusing on the figure of Jeff Budlender, central character of the opening story of Ivan Vladislavić's The Exploded View, the essay explores how, from the point at which the state engages in biopolitics ‐ that is, systematically invests in a technology of individuals ‐ forms of government cease to translate spontaneously into practices of self‐government. The result, expressed at the level of the individual, is, I argue, the often uneasy attempt to orientate the self to the individual self while at the same time taking cognisance of that self's position in the social entity as a whole. This conflicting position is, I suggest, vividly revealed in Vladislavić's account of the inner life of Budlender, demographer and statistician, as he attempts to make sense of South Africa, himself, and even the woman he loves in ways that alternate between brief concerns with the individual followed by more lasting preoccupations with the group, finally doing justice to neither.