Culture, government, and spatiality: re-assessing the ’Foucault effect’ in cultural-policy studies

This paper critically discusses the re-conceptualization of culture and governmentality in recent Australian ‘cultural-policy studies’. It argues that the further development of this conceptualization requires a more careful consideration of the complex relations between culture, power, and the different spatialities of social practices. The assumptions of this literature regarding social democratic public institutions and the nation-state are critically addressed in the light of contemporary processes of globalization. It is argued that the use made of Foucault in this paradigm privileges a model of disciplinary power which is dependent on a particular spatialization of social subjects and technologies of the self. As a result, an uncritical application of this model to all cultural practices supports a far too coherent image of practices of ‘government’ in producing sought after subjecteffects. It is suggested that the different articulations of spatio-temporal presence and absence in cultural technologies requires a less totalizing understanding of the forms of power exercised through governmental practices.