Subjectivity and government

Abstract

This book is reviewed as an example of the manner in which cultural critique approaches the question of the formation and regulation of personal capacities and conducts. Despite its sophistication and power, it is argued that the dialectical character of this critique leaves it incapable of interrogating its two central objects: subjectivity and government. As a results, Donald's critique retains the notion of subjectivity and its unconscious formation as the essential site of resistance to government. Against this oppositional cultural politics it is argued that human agency has no single general (subjective) form that might be captured by or freed from government. It is further argued that the heterogeneity of the instruments and objectives of government robs such a politics of both a general logic of power that might be resisted and any general reason for resistance.