Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The liberal character of ethological governance

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 34; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03085140500111964

1469-5766

Melanie J. White,

Marxism and Critical Theory

Abstract This paper examines the liberal government of ‘character’ from the perspective offered by those practices, strategies and techniques I term ‘ethological governance’. Ethological governance is neither an ideology nor a tradition of thought, but denotes an orientation to human conduct that is organized by an explicit concern with character and its formation. The paper argues that ethological governance, especially in its Anglo-American strain, subscribes to a developmental notion of human conduct (i.e. character) and serves as a standard for liberal government by judging the responsible exercise of freedom. To this end, the paper examines how ethological governance establishes a context of government that harnesses character as a tool for social and political transformation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by (1) explaining how character establishes a normative scale against which the capacity for individuals to practise their freedom is measured and (2) offering a symptomatic reading of those aspects of John Stuart Mill's work that deal with ethology in order to show how character indexes the judicious limits of government and serves as a basic test of citizenly competence. Keywords: ethologycharactercitizenshipfreedomgovernanceJ. S. Mill This article is part of the following collections: Economy and Society in COVID Times Acknowledgments Earlier versions of this paper were presented in January 2003 at the Citizenship Studies Symposium at York University in Toronto and in June 2003 at the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association annual meeting held at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of a Canada Research Chair Postdoctoral Fellowship in Citizenship Studies and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship. Special thanks to Alan Hunt, Engin Isin, Alexandre Lefebvre and the anonymous readers of this journal for their helpful comments. Notes Melanie White is Assistant Professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Previously, she held a Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Division of Social Science at York University in Toronto, Canada, along with a Canada Research Chair Postdoctoral Fellowship in Citizenship Studies. Most recently, Gilles Deleuze develops a concept of ‘ethology’ from Spinoza's philosophy. Deleuze's use is different from that expressed here: he uses it to signify the variation in the capacities and powers of an individual essence (mode) in relation to its territories and encounters (Deleuze Citation1988: 122–30; Deleuze and Guattari Citation1987: 256–60; see also Gatens Citation1996; Gatens and Lloyd Citation1999; Lefebvre Citation2005). See for instance, the contemporary collection of moral fables compiled by William Bennett in The Book of Virtues (Citation1993) and the follow-up publication titled The Moral Compass (Citation1995). One might fruitfully say that ‘dividing practices’ work to distinguish dispositions of honesty from dishonesty, kindness from meanness and independence from dependence. By dividing practices, I mean those practices that produce subjects that are ordered in relation to one another according to standards of differentiation and comparison. They are a form of subjectification that depends on the combined effects of technologies of the self and technologies of power (Foucault Citation1982: 208). For their part, habits are consigned a status of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ only when they are situated in relation to the dividing practices of character that develop over the longue durée. Indeed, one's character cannot be assessed in an instant, but can only be observed, measured and evaluated over time. Mariana Valverde's argument in Diseases of the Will (Citation1998) is especially useful in this context. She examines so-called ‘diseases of the will’, such as addiction and alcoholism, through a genealogy of freedom, one that offers a treatment of eighteenth and nineteenth century discourses on the constitutive relation between habit and the will. One of the advantages of Valverde's analysis is that she situates the problem of ‘habit’ in relation to an analysis of addiction to explore how so-called ‘diseased wills’ were targeted by self-help regimes that enabled one to ‘kick the habit’ (1998: 5). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the notion of ‘moral exercise’ emerged as a means of strengthening character, in much the same way that one might lift weights in order to build muscle mass. It served either to strengthen already existing muscles of character, that is to make the ‘will’ stronger, or to build ‘good’ character through ‘force of habit’ where such strength did not exist before. Both depended on the existence of an arsenal of habits to strengthen resolve. Moral exercise was imperative for a masculine or ‘muscular morality’ that sought to balance the often feminized aspects of moral education. Here, character was associated with a masculine ethos that celebrated physical and moral health in order to cultivate virtues such as stoicism, fortitude and endurance. As Mill's friend and critic Alexander Bain notes, Mill's ‘next book…was to be on the new science, first sketched in the Logic, and there called “ethology”. With parental fondness, he cherished this project for a considerable time; regarding it as the foundation and cornerstone of Sociology…In fact, it never came to anything; and he seems shortly to have dropped thinking of it’ (Citation1882: 82). Although Mill's ethological ideas were not taken up by the British empiricists, they appeared to have gained a great deal of currency in France through the works of Hippolyte Taine and Théodule Ribot (Leary Citation1982: 157). One might situate Mill's work in relation to another canonical figure in the liberal history of ideas, that is John Locke, who, in James Tully's treatment, reflects a commitment to governing conduct through the formation of mental and physical habits that are organized in relation to a micro-physics of ‘pain’ (Tully Citation1993: 223). Here, the continual repetition of mental and physical labour until it becomes pleasurable and part of one's common practice comes to govern conduct, as opposed to following the dictates of custom and education (ibid.: 232). Although Englishness functioned principally as a cultural category, even though ‘the English race’ was not a common phrase, the idea of an ‘Anglo Saxon race’ held enormous currency at the time. Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing this out to me. A particularly fine example is found in the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865 where impoverished peasants on the British island Jamaica petitioned Queen Victoria (1819–1901) for permission to use crown lands for planting. Having been denied their claim, a riot ensued where a number of white British subjects were killed and the courthouse burned. In a controversial move, Jamaica's Governor Edward John Eyre (1815–1901) declared martial law in the hopes of suppressing the rebellion, and proceeded to whip, torture and execute hundreds of West Indians. As several scholars have pointed out, the establishment of a Royal Commission to investigate the abuse – headed initially by Charles Buxton and then by John Stuart Mill – constituted the re-imagining of what it meant to be English; consequently the identity of those beaten under Eyre's regime came to be known as English (Baucom Citation1999; Hall Citation2002). As Mill remarks in his Autobiography, ‘There was much more at stake than only justice to the Negroes, imperative as was that consideration. The question was, whether the British dependencies, and eventually perhaps Great Britain herself, were to be under the government of law, or of military license; whether the lives and persons of British subjects are at the mercy of any two or three officers however raw and inexperienced or reckless or brutal’ (Citation1981 [1873]: 281). Additional informationNotes on contributorsMelanie White Melanie White is Assistant Professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Previously, she held a Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Division of Social Science at York University in Toronto, Canada, along with a Canada Research Chair Postdoctoral Fellowship in Citizenship Studies.