The Government of Desire: A Genealogical Perspective

Abstract

Desire is everywhere -everywhere recognised, displayed, discussed, and drawn upon. It is so much part of our lives, so deeply entrenched in our bodies and minds -so "hard-wired" into our brains, some would say -that we cannot imagine a life without it, indeed cannot imagine what it could mean to live without experiencing its force and appeal, but also the conflicts and struggles it gives rise to. The Law of Desire, Almodóvar would say, is one by which we live. It seems to play a crucial part in understanding who we are, our sense of self, and our relations to others. Its ubiquity, we claim, is a sign of its rootedness in human nature. We readily admit that it is a force we need to reckon with, and governs us, often beyond our own will, but we do not question that we are creatures -and not just subjects -of desire.What, in that context, are we to make, of the somewhat elliptical and puzzling remark that Michel Foucault made in the course of a discussion at The University of Berkeley in 1983, according to which the western civilisation is the civilisation of desire?1 We might find this suggestion needlessly provocative. 2 departure in that provocation and consider seriously the possibility that our culture of desire has an origin and a history, and a very western history at that. Following Foucault, and extending his thought where necessary, I want to take seriously his suggestion that desire, or, better said perhaps, the problem of desire, emerged at a particular time and under specific historical circumstances; that it had a particular and far-reaching history; that it defines who we are today in ways that we aren't always aware of, and aren't inevitable. In what follows, I will attempt to define the limits or contours of the various configurations or "regimes" of desire under which we live, trace their emergence, and measure their consequences. However, despite my wishone could say my fantasy -to imagine a philosophical history of desire from Greek and Roman Antiquity to the present day, I will limit myself to exploring the roots and sketching the dominant features of the contemporary face of desire. 3 defines as "the courage to make use of one's own understanding" and the "public use of one's reason." Philosophy, then, insofar as it is bound up with such a project, is identified with an "attitude" and an "ethos," best described as the "permanent critique of our historical era" 3 and the "historical ontology of ourselves." 4 To philosophise is to ask about the manner in which we are governed, the authority under which we live, and the truths we live by, all of which contribute to making us the subjects that we are.But it is also, and at the same time, to ask ourselves whether and how we could govern ourselves differently, the sort of subjects we could become, the kind of self we could be.It seems, then, and following Foucault's own clue, that by interrogating desire, and the manner in which we came to recognise ourselves as subjects of desire, we can arrive at a critical ontology of our present and ourselves, a...

The Affects By Which We Are Torn: Four Essays on Government and Affect

“…By taking up this question, the present inquiry aims to contribute with new insights about the specific connection Spinoza establishes between 'government' and 'affect'. 1 For theoretical studies, see (Negri and Hardt 2000;Esposito 2008;Saar 2013;Negri 2013;Mühlhoff 2018;de Beistegui 2016;, and for applied ones, see (Clough 2008;Pereira 2019;Shoshana 2022).…”