‘Doggy-biopolitics’: Governing via the First Dog

Abstract

Biopolitics, traditionally understood as management of the human population, has been extended to include nonhuman animal life and posthuman life. In this article, we turn to literatures that advance Foucauldian biopolitics to explore the mode of government enabled by the dog of the US presidential family -the First Dog called Bo Obama. With analytical focus on vitalisation efforts, we follow the construction of Bo in various outlets, such as the websites of the White House and an animal rights organisation. Bo's microphysical escapades and the negotiation thereof show how contemporary biopolitics, which targets the vitality of the dog population, is linked to seductive neoliberal management techniques and subjectivities. We discuss 'cuddly management' in relation to Foucauldian scholarship within organisation and management studies and propose that the construction of Bo facilitates interspecies family norms and an empathic embrace of difference circumscribed by vitalisation efforts that we pinpoint as 'doggy-biopolitics'.

Provoked byCharlie Hebdo: Visual Satire and Management Studies

“…And compassion, as Hanson and Trank (2016) showed when studying a death penalty defense team, is as overlooked an area of concern in management research as satire (Tsui, 2013). Last, caricature can teach us not to be too blinded by apparently dominant figures and to practice a skepticism of the presumed prowess of those we research (Skoglund & Redmalm, 2017)…”

‘Please tell me when you are in pain’: A heartbreaking story of care, grief and female–canine companionship

“…Here, Suvi views the dogs that have been in her life ‘as unique beings possessing human characteristics’ (Beverland et al, , p. 496), and the special canine features of these dogs can be summarized into ‘a spectrum of anthropomorphic characteristics: happiness and loyalty, as well as wildfulness and mischievousness’ (Skoglund & Redmalm, , pp. 253–254).…”

“…In the two notes above, the social relations of body work (Wolkowitz, ) and the heartbreakingly bittersweet grief and palliative care between Kerttu and the various humans around her are materialized, which could be also interpreted as an illustrative example of the tension between care as love and as labour (Lyon, ), practised here by the keeper of the dog. ‘Living and breathing dogs may offer a similarly shameless and dogged, yet faithful, resistance against the regimentation of life’, suggest Skoglund and Redmalm (, p. 260), as the following note highlights:

I now feel deeper companionship and being in the world with my dog, emotionality in the everyday moments with her, and some kind of ‘silent’ healing.

Knapp (, p. 7) states that ‘Dogs lead us into a world that is sometimes kind and gentle but that can be frightening, frustrating, and confusing, too.’ This is finely illustrated in the autoethnographic note above, in which the companionship between Suvi and Kerttu feels occasionally frightening. Humans need to make sense of the uncertainty of the state of our companion's health but also listen to their ‘voices's and their agency (see Hamilton & Taylor, ; Haraway, ).…”

“…As non‐human animals are present, viable and active agents in the daily life of numerous organizations in their own right (see,e.g., Birke & Brandt, ; Hamilton & McCabe, ; Hamilton & Taylor, ; O’Doherty, ; Schuurman, ; Schuurman & Franklin, ), they deserve our scholarly attention (Doré & Michalon, ). Recently, a number of researchers (see,e.g., Doré & Michalon, ; Hamilton & Taylor, ; O’Doherty, ; Sayers, , ; Skoglund & Redmalm, ; Tallberg, ) have discussed the prevalent neglect of other living non‐human agents within our scholarly field by addressing the variety of ways in which animals actively construct, shape and participate in organizational life.…”

“…As Durgee () argues, ‘for a lot of dog owners, dogs are important reflectors of one's self and close emotional companions’ (p. 468). Therefore, the self‐identity of humans partly depends on the ways that they construct themselves in relation to their dogs (Skoglund & Redmalm, ). We work from the assumption that human agency is always co‐constructed (e.g., Satama & Huopalainen, ) with, and in relation to, many other living and breathing non‐human agents (e.g., Cudworth, , p. 1).…”