Governing ‘others’
The (m)other as subject in the US family planning discourses
This paper argues that for contemporary liberalism to govern legitimately, governmental discourses have to create certain identities as ‘other’, that is, as the polar opposite of the good, normal citizen. To fix those identities as a-relational ‘substances’ in the universal language of law and science. And to use those ‘substances’ in games of inclusion/exclusion that simulate non-intervention while safeguarding the liberal ‘will to govern’. Centrally, the identities posited as ‘other’ are those the contemporary governmental discourses also posit as ‘particular’: the poor, the racialised and the gendered. Thus, it is argued that those governmental practices depend in equal measures on the simultaneously individualizing and totalising nature of governmental bio-power, on the particular/universal liberal tension and on the essentialising nature of scientific truths. Those points are illustrated by the US national family planning strategy’s construction of reality in terms of a ‘pathological mother’, a (m)other.
References
Badinter, Elisabeth.
1981 The Myth of Motherhood: A Historical View of the Maternal Instinct. London: Souvenir Press.
Barry, Andrew, Osborne, Thomas and Rose, Nikolas
(eds) 1996 Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-liberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: UCL Press.
Brown, Wendy.
1995 States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller
1991 (eds).
The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Burchell, Graham.
1995 The Attributes of Citizenship: Virtue, Manners and the Activity of Citizenship.
Economy and Society Vol. 24, No. 4, November: 540–58.
Butler, Judith.
1990 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.
Dean, Mitchell.
1991 The Constitution of Poverty: Toward a Genealogy of Liberal Governance. London: Routledge.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix.
1988 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: Continuum.
Fanon, Franz.
1986 Black Skin, White Mask. London: Pluto Press.
Foucault, Michel.
1980 Power/Knowledge. ed. Colin Gordon. Brighton: Harvester Press.
Foucault, Michel
1981 The Order of Discourse. In:
Robert J.C. Young (ed.).
Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Foucault, Michel.
1982 The Subject and Power, Afterword in:
Hubert L. Dreyfus, and
Paul Rabinow.
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. London: Harvester Wheat-sheaf.
Foucault Michel
1988 The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom. In:
James Bernauer, and
David Ramussen (eds.).
The Final Foucault. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Foucault, Michel.
1990 The History of Sexuality Vol. 1. London: Penguin.
Foucault, Michel.
1991a “Governmentality”. In:
Graham Burchell,
Colin Gordon, and
Peter Miller (eds.).
The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Foucault, Michel
1991b Questions of Method. In:
Graham Burchell,
Colin Gordon, and
Peter Miller (eds.).
The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Brighton: Harvester Wheat-sheaf.
Foucault, Michel.
2002 The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Fraser, Nancy.
1993 Clintonism, Welfare, and the Antisocial Wage: The Emergence of a Neoliberal Political Imaginary.
Rethinking Marxism Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring: 9–23.
Fraser, Nancy, and Gordon, Linda.
1994 A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State.
Signs Vol. 19, No. 2: 309–336.
Gordon, Colin.
1991 Governmental Rationality: An Introduction. In:
Graham Burchell,
Colin Gordon, and
Peter Miller (eds.).
The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Gordon, Linda.
2002 The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Handler, Joel F, and Hasenfeld, Yeheskel
1991 The Moral Construction of Poverty: Welfare Reform in America. London: Sage.
Henshaw, Stanley K.
1998 Unintended Pregnancy in the United States.
Family Planning Perspectives Vol. 30, No. 1, Jan-Feb: 24–29.
Hindess, Barry
1977 Philosophy and Methodology in the Social Sciences. Hassocks: The Harvester Press.
Hindess, Barry.
1996 Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy: Variations on a Governmental Theme. In:
Andrew Barry,
Thomas Osborne, and
Nikolas Rose. (eds).
Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-liberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: UCL Press.
Mitchell, Timothy
1991 The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics,
American Political Science Review Vol. 85, No. 1, March: 77–96.
Kost, Kathryn, Landry, David, and Darroch, Jaqueline E.
1998 The Effects of Pregnancy Status on Birth Outcomes and Infant Care.
Family Planning Perspectives Vol. 30, No. 5: 223–230.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe, Chantal
1990 Post-Marxism without Apologies. In:
Ernesto Laclau.
New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe, Chantal.
2001 Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politic. London: Verso.
Ladd-Taylor, Molly, and Umansky, Lauri
(eds) 1988 “Bad Mothers”: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-Century America. New York: New York University Press.
Latour, Bruno.
1987 Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Cambridge. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Nancy, Jean-Luc
1991 The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Patterson, James T.
2000 America’s Struggle against Poverty in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Procacci, Giovanna.
1991 “Social Economy and the Government of Poverty”. In:
Graham Burchell,
Colin Gordon, and
Peter Miller (eds).
The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
PRWORA
1996:
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (H.R. 3734)
[URL] (Accessed October 13, 2006).
Reed, Adolph Jr.
1992 The Underclass as Myth and Symbol.
Radical America Vol. 24, No. 1: 21–43.
Rose, Nikolas.
1996 Governing “Advanced” Liberal Democracies. In:
Andrew Barry,
Thomas Osborne, and
Nikolas Rose (eds).
Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-liberalism and Rationalities of Government. London: UCL Press.
Rose, Nikolas.
1999 Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rose, Nikolas, and Miller, Peter.
1992 Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government.
British Journal of Sociology Vol. 43, No. 2, June: 173–205.
Ruhl, Leanne.
2002 Dilemmas of the Will: Uncertainty, Reproduction and the Rhetoric of Control.
Signs Vol. 27, No. 3: 641–664.
Santelli, John, Rochat, Roger, Hatfield-Timajchy, Kendra, Gilbert, Brenda G., Curtis, Kathryn, Cabral, Rebecca, Hirsch, Jennifer S., Schieve, Laura
.
Unintended Pregnancy Working Group 2003 The Measurement and Meaning of Unintended Pregnancy.
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health Vol. 35, No. 2: 94–101.
Schram, Sanford.
1995 Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Skocpol, Theda.
1995 Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United State. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service
1991 Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives. Rockville, MD. Report no. DHSS/PUB/PHS–91–50212.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
2000 Healthy People 2010: Understanding and Improving Health 2nd ed., Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, November 2000, DC 20402–9382.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Striley, Katie Margavio & Kimberly Field-Springer
2014.
The Bad Mother Police: Theorizing Risk Orders in the Discourses of Infant Feeding Practices.
Health Communication 29:6
► pp. 552 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.