Meditations on the (Im)possibility of regicide: Foucault, government and state sovereignty
Date
1999
Authors
Ng, Konrad Gar-Yeu
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Abstract
This thesis investigates the sovereignty problematic and its implications for (re)articulating the political in the absence/presence of the state. Specifically, I sketch three stances. First, I historicise the practices of state sovereignty and government. Second, I retrace Foucault's studies in governmentality as a reply to the sovereignty problematic. Third, I examine how the sovereignty problematic unfolds in post Foucauldian readings of the political, given the processes of movement and change.
I argue that post-Foucauldian theorists are unable to resolve Foucault's "incomplete" attempt at regicide. This incompleteness reveals the main stake of (re)articulating the political in the absence/ presence of the state: the line of inside/ outside. Ultimately, what is needed is an interrogation of the ubiquitous role of the statal political community as a measure and model for understanding political life. The politics of inside/ outside remains a political fiction that moderns are not prepared to give up.