Authority, experience and the life of power

Blencowe, Claire, Dawney, Leila and Brigstocke, Julian ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2455-0504, eds. 2014. Authority, experience and the life of power. Routledge.

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Abstract

Taking up the challenge of understanding power in its complexity, this volume returns to and revitalises the concept of ‘authority’. It provides a powerful analysis of the ways that relationships of trust, attachment, governance and inequality become possible when subjectivities and bodies are invested in the life of power. The collection offers a vibrant new analysis of the biopolitical, arguing that ‘experience of life’ has become equated with ‘objectivity’ in contemporary culture and has thus become a primary basis of authority. ‘Biopolitical’ or ‘experiential’ authority can be generated through reference to a variety of experiences, performances or intensities of life including creativity, radicalism, risk-taking, experimentation, inter-relation, suffering and proximity to death. The authority-producing capacities of community and aesthetics are key issues, pointing to vexed relationships between politics and policing, inventiveness and violence. The contributors develop their theoretical analyses through discussion of a range of specific sites including mental-health service user and survivor politics, biological knowledge, refugee activism, stories of suffering, urban art, anarchism, neo-liberal community politics and marketization. Authority, Experience & the Life of Power challenges thinking on what ‘the political’ is and isn’t, pushing against the all too easy equivocation of revolutionary break and empowerment.

Item Type:	Book
Book Type:	Edited Book
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General) H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HM Sociology J Political Science > JC Political theory
Additional Information:	Special Issue of the Journal of Political Power.
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	9781138809369
Funders:	AHRC, ESRC
Last Modified:	11 Nov 2022 09:23
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/67911

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