Contextualizing Family Planning : Truth, Subject, and the Other in the U.S. Government

This book is a critical analysis of the technologies of identity-formation in governmental family planning policy. Panu argues that in order for contemporary liberalism to govern legitimately, governmental discourses have to create and subsequently alienate certain identities as "other" that is, as the polar opposite of the good, normal citizen. These identities usually center on the poor, the racialised, and the gendered. These arguably discriminatory practices are illustrated through the investigation of the U.S. bio- and anatomo-politics of reproduction in the national family planning strategy, in an analytical framework that relates them to the welfare benefit policies in the same country. Panu argues that as long as neo-liberal governmental apparatuses map and rule society using this combination of "othering" and foundational assumptions, each governmental intervention reinforces the systems that make domination, inequality, and exclusion possible.--Résumé de l'éditeur The book uses various governmental texts to push its main point: that a sine-qua-non condition of liberal governing is 'othering', by which it means an understanding of "difference" as natural, essential, and irreducible. This argument is applied to an analysis of the formation of knowledge and identity in liberalism; the book aims to demonstrate that 'othering' founds all modern knowledge and power relations and therefore that racism, colonialism, eugenics, patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, as well as all the past and present violences of modernity including slavery and genocide, are not aberrations, but built-in, structural and inevitable characteristics of liberal governing. Some of the chapters insist on the processes through which this 'othering' determines the formation of scientific knowledge, especially in the field of family planning. Despite being strongly inspired by Foucault, the book has a stab at the Anglo school of 'governmentality' studies that is accuses of a lazy and accomplice understanding of liberalism. It also volunteers a skeptical analysis of the euphoria surrounding the election of Barack Obama and of the future political effects of his mandate. This book is a critical analysis of the technologies of identity-formation in governmental family planning policy. Panu argues that in order for contemporary liberalism to govern legitimately, governmental discourses have to create and subsequently alienate certain identities as "other" that is, as the polar opposite of the good, normal citizen. These identities usually center on the poor, the racialised, and the gendered. These arguably discriminatory practices are illustrated through the investigation of the U.S. bio- and anatomo-politics of reproduction in the national family planning strategy, in an analytical framework that relates them to the welfare benefit policies in the same country. Panu argues that as long as neo-liberal governmental apparatuses map and rule society using this combination of "othering" and foundational assumptions, each governmental intervention reinforces the systems that make domination, inequality, and exclusion possible.--Résumé de l'éditeur "This book is a critical analysis of the technologies of identity-formation in governmental family planning policy. Panu argues that in order for contemporary liberalism to govern legitimately, governmental discourses have to create and subsequently alienate certain identities as "other" that is, as the polar opposite of the good, normal citizen. These identities usually center on the poor, the racialised, and the gendered. These arguably discriminatory practices are illustrated through the investigation of the U.S. bio- and anatomo-politics of reproduction in the national family planning strategy, in an analytical framework that relates them to the welfare benefit policies in the same country. Panu argues that as long as neo-liberal governmental apparatuses map and rule society using this combination of "othering" and foundational assumptions, each governmental intervention reinforces the systems that make domination, inequality, and exclusion possible."--BOOK JACKET This book is a critical analysis of the technologies of identify-formation in governmental family planning policy. Panu argues that in order for contemporary liberalism to govern legitimately, governmental discourses have to create and subsequently alienate certain identifies as "other," that is, as the polar opposite of the good, normal citizen. These identities usually center on the poor, the racialized, and the gendered. These arguably discriminatory practices are illustrated through the investigation of the U.S. bio-and anatomo-politics of reproduction in the national family planning strategy, in an analytical framework that relates them to the welfare benefit policies in the same country. Panu argues that as long as neo-liberal governmental apparatuses map and rule society using this combination of "othering" and foundational assumptions, each governmental intervention reinforces the systems that make domination, inequality, and exclusion possible Government, Truth, And Subjectivity In A Post-substance Reality -- The Other In Liberal Governmentality -- Governing The Nation's Reproduction : Race As Pathology -- Governing The Nation's Reproduction : Culture, Poverty, And Eugenics -- Patriarchal Orders Of Reality In The Apparatuses Of Sexuality Regulation -- Strategies Of Truth And The Formation Of Governmental Reality -- Liberal Governing And The Contemporary Political Imagination. Mihnea Panu. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [233]-240) And Index.