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Part of
Studies of Discourse and Governmentality: New perspectives and methods
Edited by Paul McIlvenny, Julia Zhukova Klausen and Laura Bang Lindegaard
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 66] 2016
► pp. 265–294

Governmentality, counter-conduct and prefigurative demonstrations

Interactional and categorial practices in the strange case of the United Nathans weapons inspectors

The interactional and categorial practices of a prefigurative protest demonstration are examined using video recordings that document a theatrical protest event called “United Nathans weapons inspectors” in February 2003. The chapter undertakes an analytics of protest to uncover how fields of visibility, forms of knowledge, technologies and apparatuses, and subjectivities and identities are negotiated and accomplished collaboratively. Conversation analysis (CA) helps us document the ways in which fields of visibility and modes of rationality are sequentially organised. Membership categorisation analysis (MCA) uncovers the categorial work by which subjectivation is morally accomplished in social interaction. The chapter shows how CA and MCA can help trace the interactional, embodied and categorial practices that are endogenous to conducting the conduct of others and the self, and thus which constitute or contest the rationalities of governmentality.

Published online: 29 June 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.66.09mci
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