Governance as a noun signifies power detached from governing agents

Evidence

“Government often refers to the governing body itself, while governance refers to the act of governing. So members of a government are engaged in governance.” But why is the term “governance” needed (and needed only recently) as a substitute or supplement for the active verb “to govern”? Why does the act of governing need to be consolidated into a noun, and what is the significance of that conversion? What continuous process of power, detached from agents of execution or enforcement, does it signify? — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 236

Categorization

• QUESTION: The noun-ification of governing is a genuinely open analytic question worth pursuing — what does consolidating a verb into a noun do to how we imagine power?
• XREF: connects to: Governance displaces the rule of law with business instruments — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 137; Governance only became neoliberalism’s administrative form after converging with it — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 232; Governance vocabulary displaces the vocabulary of power from organized life. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 249

Broader Connections

• Governance vocabulary displaces the vocabulary of power from organized life. #expands (0.90) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 249