Governmentality

I was reading an article on Foucault's notion of "governmentality" and its relation to education policies, and came across this elaboration by Nikolas Rose that I thought can spark off thoughts on how we think about and articulate the idea of 'the State' (emphasis as shown through bolding of words are made by me):

"The 'power of the State' is a resultant, not a cause, an outcome of the composing and assembling of actors, flows, buildings, relations of authority into relatively durable associations mobilized, to a greater or lesser extent, towards the achievement of particular objectives by common means. This is not a matter of the domination of the 'network' by 'the State' but rather a matter of translation. The translation of political programmes articulated in rather general terms - national efficiency, democracy, equality, enterprise - into ways of seeking authority over persons, places and activities in specific locales and practices. The translation of thought and action from a 'centre of calculation' into a diversity of locales dispersed across a territory - translation in the sense of a movement from one place to another. Through a multitude of such mobile relays, relations are established between those who are spatially and temporally separated, and between events and decisions in spheres that none the less retain their formal autonomy."

The paper goes on to explain this notion, which can be summed up in 2 sentences:

"This is not the stuff of top-down state planning, but rather, indexes the ways that these discursive constructions come to infuse themselves in institutions as such, orchestrating cohesion and elaborating affect, sensibility, feeling and association in complex ways. The goal of educational theorists here is to map out relations between specific sites, and the ways these constructs translate between and across these sites."

Not sure if this makes sense, especially if you have no prior understanding of the idea of "Discourse". But this has been, to a large extent, the lens through which I am seeing Singapore politics and policies today. Power is not a given - it lies in the ability to convince and 'shape minds' through rhetoric and 'desirable', tangible results. Using Kuo Pao Kun's metaphor, power is acted upon us when we get 'massaged' by the State. The only pitfall is when the massage gets too comfortable and we get seduced, losing our 'oppositional critical conscience' as Edward Said termed it in Orientalism. When Teo Ser Luck told youngsters 'not to dream unrealistic dreams', he was in fact showing his lack of understanding about how discourses work in today's world. Such a minister will never acquire the tact of LKY. Perhaps, this is a skill lost among a generation of ministers who grew up in a state that was already formed and shaped - the generation we term as Post-65ers. Even for Obama, I am eagerly looking forward to seeing how he turns his nicely crafted speeches into concrete actions that 'orchestrate cohesion and elaborate affect' among the American public. =)