Governance governs through anonymous processes rather than identifiable agents

Evidence

We might put the problem as a proposition: “Governance” signifies a specific mode of governing that is evacuated of agents and institutionalized in processes, norms, and practices. According to social theorist Thomas Lemke, “governance involves a shift in the analytical and theoretical focus from institutions to processes of rule.” Lemke adds that governance “announces the eclipse or erosion of state sovereignty” Importantly, this emphasis on process over sources or institutions is not restricted to methodology. Rather, as we will see in the discussions of devolution, responsibilization, and best practices, much of the normative and constitutive power of governance occurs through and in processes that bear no reference to agents. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 237

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definitional move: governance as agentless process-based rule, foundational for the whole chapter.
• QUESTION: The claim that governance is ‘evacuated of agents’ — how does this square with the later claim that neoliberalism was strategized and installed by specific actors? Worth tracking.
• XREF: connects to: Governance by total data transfers social trust to an undefined ruling ‘we’ — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1370; Dependence on anonymous producers drives demand for formal legal control — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 180