Abstract
The suggestion that the general economy of power in our societies is becoming a domain of
security was made by Michel Foucault in the late 1970s. This paper takes inspiration from
Foucault?s work to interpret human rights as technologies of governmentality, which make
possible the safe and secure society. I examine, by way of illustration, the site of the
European Union and its use of new modes of governance to regulate rights discourse – in
particular via the emergence of a new Fundamental Rights Agency. „Governance? in the EU
is constructed in an apolitical way, as a departure from traditional legal and juridical methods
of governing. I argue, however, that the features of governance represent technologies of
government(ality), a new form of both being governed through rights and of governing rights.
The governance feature that this article is most interested in is experts. The article aims to
show, first and foremost, how rights operate as technologies of governmentality via a new
relation to expertise. Second, it considers the significant implications that this reading of
rights has for rights as a regulatory and normalising discourse. Finally, it highlights how the
overlap between rights and governance discourses can be problematic because (as the EU
model illustrates) governance conceals the power relations of governmentality, allowing, for
instance, the unproblematic representation of the EU as an international human rights actor
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 251-271 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Law and Critique |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Oct 2011 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Law