... this blog is an ongoing investigation into modes of suspension that started as a research project in Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College in 2011 ...

Saturday 4 June 2011

To govern is to govern things?

“Government is the right disposition of things arranged so as to lead to a suitable end.” 
Guilaumme de la Perriere

If we look at what characterizes the objects on which power bears in Macchiavelli’s The Prince, we see that objects, the target of power is, on the one hand, a territory, on the other, its inhabitants. From the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, sovereignty is not exercised on things, but first of all on a territory, and consequently on the subjects who inhabit it. In La Perrier’s text the definition of government does not refer to the territory in any way: one governs things. It is not a matter of an opposition of between things and men, but rather showing that government is not related to the territory, but to a sort of complex of men and things. The things government must be concerned about men in their relationships, bonds and complex involvements with things like wealth, resources, means of subsistence, and, of course, the territory with its borders, qualities, climate, dryness, fertility, and so on. “Things” are men in their relationships with things like customs, habits, ways of acting and thinking. Finally, they are men in their relationship with things like accidents, misfortunes, famine, epidemics, and death. So, to govern means to govern things. Government therefore has a purpose; it arranges things (for an end).  Government is defined as a right way of arranging things in order to lead them, not to the ‘common good’, but to a ‘suitable end. This implies, first of all, a plurality of ends. It is not a matter of imposing law on men, but the of the disposition of things, that is to say that, of employing laws as tactics; arranging things so that this or that end may be achieved through a certain number of means.

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