Experts of the Soul1
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Nikolas Rose Experts of the Soul1 Nikolas Rose nfn: In dn lbrln drthptlthn Gllhftn d Wtn ht h phlh hnnntbhrlh ht, nht nr nbl f d ltn lhr rh z. dr vn dr br b zr l, ndrn h n thhn Stn, nh dnn ürr hr bn führn. In d tr rdn n W drtllt, d Gbrt dr "Slnnnr" nd drn Stlln n vrhdnn zplthn Arrnnt vrtndn rdn önnn. hl, rd rntrt, hfft brhnbr Indvdn, nd tltbr ntrndvdll ä, ntrtützt Atrtät t thhthrpthr ründn nd tllt n thh hnl zr rfün, t dr d tn Slbt dr Indvdn frt rdn nn. Knnzhn dr "thn" dr hl nd ntrnh t dr rblt lbrlr rtn vrbndn, d t d Anprh vn rvtht, tnltät nd At rrn. rnr hbn d Knnzhn dtn für d närtn llhftlhn Utltnprz n "Otrp". Sr: In th lbrl drt ptlt t f "th t", phll xprt h d tlf ndpnbl, nt nl n th rltn f dn fr th ftr t th fl, bt l n th thl t rdn t hh tzn lv thr lv. h ppr t t prhnd th brth f th "nnr f th hn l" nd thr pl thn dffrnt pltl rrnnt. hl, t r, ndvdl h r llbl, ntrbjtv p tht r nbl, ndrpn thrt th n ththrpt rtnl nd prvd n thl thnl fr th hpn f tn lv. h ftr f th rhn f phl r ntrnll lnd t th prblt f lbrl dr hh t vrn thrh prv, rtnlt nd tn. h l hv pltn fr th rrnt trnfrtn n th t f "Etrn Erp". It was, I believe, Joseph Stalin who refer- grounded in a claim to truth, asserting techni- red to writers under his brand of socialism as cal efficacy, and avowing humane ethical vi- `engineers of the human soul'. In the liberal, rtues. Whilst the notion of professionalization democratic and capitalist societies of „the implies an attempt to found occupational West", the task of engineering the human soul exclusiveness an the basis of a monopolisation has fallen to a different sector - to professio- of an area of practice and the possession of an nals imbued with the vocabularies, the exclusive disciplinary base, expertise is hete- evaluations, the techniques and the ethics of rogeneous. It amalgamates knowledges and psychology. Whether it be at home or at work, techniques from different sources into a in marketing or in politics, in child rearing or complex 'know-how'. The attempt to ratify in sexuality, psychological expertise has made the coherence of this array of procedures and itself indispensable to modern life in such forms of thought is made retrospectively, and societies. How should this phenomenon be characteristically not by deriving them from a understood? single theory but by unifying them within a I suggest that we should not answer this pedagogic practice. question in terms of the evolution of ideas, the The notion of expertise enables us to appliance of science or the rise of a profession, distinguish between the occupational advan- but in terms of expertise. I use the term „ex- cement of a particular professional sector, the pertise" to refer to a particular kind of social spread of a particular mode of thought and authority, characteristically deployed around technique, and the transformation of practices problems, exercising a certain diagnostic gaze, of regulation. For the social consequences of 3. Jahrgang Heft 1/2 91 Exprt f th Sl psychology are not the same as the social Making psychology technical consequences of psychologists. Psychology is a `generous' discipline: the key to the social From the perspective of expertise, our ana- penetration of psychology lies in its capacity lysis of the proliferation of psychology connects to lend itself freely' to others who will `bor- with a number of other reflections on trans- row' it because of what it offers to them in the formations in social arrangements and forms way of a justification and guide to action. of authority in European societies over the last Hence psychological ways of thinking and century. our focus shifts from psychology acting can infuse the practices of other social itself to the modes in which psychological actors such as doctors, social workers, mana- knowledges and techniques have grafted gers, nurses, even accountants. Psychology themselves onto other practices. Psychology enters into alliance with such agents of social is seen as offering something to, and deriving authority, colonising their ways of calculating something from, its capacity to enter into a and arguing with psychological vocabularies, number of diverse 'human technologies'. The reformulating their ways of explaining nor- term 'technology' directs our attention to the mality and pathology in psychological terms, characteristic ways in which practices are or- giving their techniques a psychological colo- ganized to produce certain outcomes in terms ration. It is precisely though such alliances that of human conduct: reform, efficiency, edu- psychology has made itself powerful: not so cation, cure, or virtue. It directs analysis to the much by occupational exclusiveness or mono- technical forms invented to produce these polization but because of what it has provided outcomes - ways of combining persons, truths, for others, on condition that they come to think judgments, devices and actions into a stable, and act like psychologists. reproducible and durable form. But the notion These alliances do not simply provide psy- of a human technology is not intended to imply chology with a means to gain its hold on social an inhuman technology - one that crushes and reality, as it were, by proxy. They also provide dehumanises the essential personhood of tho- something for the doctors, nurses, social wor- se caught up within it. Psychology has become kers and managers who enter into psychologi- enmeshed within such technologies, in part, cal coalitions: those engaged in the prolifera- because it answers to the wish to humanise ting practices that deal with the vagaries of them, to make them adequate to the real nature human conduct and human pathology and of the Person to be governed. seek to act upon it in a reasoned and calculated Unlike the ancient professions, psycholo- form. Psychology promises to rationalise these gy has no institution of its own: no church practices, to systematise and simplify the ways within which to redeem sin, no court of law in which authorities visualize, evaluate and within which to pronounce judgment, no ho- diagnose the conduct of their human subjects, spital within which to diagnose or cure. Psy- and conduct themselves in relation to them. In chological modes of thought and action have purporting to underpin authority by a coherent come to underpin - and then to transform - intellectual and practical regime, psychology practices that were previously cognized and offers others both a grounding in truth and legitimated in other ways - via the charisma of some formulae for efficacy. In claiming to the persona of authority, by the repetition of modulate power through a knowledge of sub- traditional procedures, by appeal to extrinsic jectivity, psychology can provide social aut- standards of morality, by rule of thumb. It hority with a basis that is not merely technical finds its social territory in all those dispersed and scientific but 'ethical'. encounters where human conduct is probte- 92 hl nd Ghht Nikolas Rose matized in relation to ethical standards, social The social vocation of psychology and its judgments or individual pathology. What is it status as expertise is intrinsically bound to that psychology can offer to such encounters? such questions. For it was through the forma- tion of a specifically psychological expertise, and through the construction of institutional Making individuals who are calculable technologies that were infused by specifically psychological values, that individual difference Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Lukacs, Haber- Warne scientifically caiculable and mas and Foucault each, in their different ways, techni-cal administrable (Rose, 1985; 1988). A suggested that calculation was central to the psychological knowledge of individual diffe- social arrangements and ethical systems of the rences did not emerge from a mysterious leap capitalist, bureaucratic and democratic socie- of the intellect or from laborious theoretical ties of North West Europe and North America, and scientific enquiry, but neither did it merely not only in the domination of nature, but also answer to the demand that capitalist control of in relation to human beings. We have entered, the labour process be legitimated, or spread it appears, the age of the calculable person, because of its eleetive affinity with a rational whose individuality is no longer ineffable, caiculating „spirit of the age". lt needs to be unique and beyond knowledge, but can be understood as an „institutional epistemology" known, mapped, calibrated, evaluated, quan- (Gordon, 1987), Born within the mundane tified, predicted and managed. organizational practices of those social appa- For those who take their cue from Marx, it ratuses constructed in so many European sta- is in the workplace and in the activity of tes in the late nineteenth century that sought to production that the rise of calculability is to be organize persons en masse in relation to par- grounded, in the capitalist imperative of mana- ticular objectives - reform, education, cure, gement, prediction and control of labour. For virtue. Schools, hospitals, prisons, reformato- those who take their cue from Weber, calcu- ries and factories acted as laboratories for the lation is an inherent part of rational administ- isolation, intensification, and inscription of ration, bound up with the desire for exactitude, human difference. They were simultaneously predictability, and the subordination of sub- locales for observation of and experimentati- stantive or ad hoc judgment to the uniformity on with human difference. Knowledge itseif ofarule. In each of these cases, the calculability needs to be understood as technique, rooted in of the person is seen as the effect or symptom attempts to organize the environment accor- of a process that has its roots elsewhere.