The figure of authority: the affective biopolitics of the mother and the dying man

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between authority-production and experience through a consideration of the emergence of certain figures as authorities on particular matters as a result of extraordinary experiences that they have undergone. It argues that analysis of such figures of experiential authority can help us to identify ‘objectivities’: foundational tenets upon which their authority is based and to which it ultimately refers. With reference to Harry Patch, a veteran of the First World War and Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack at a bus stop, I contend that the authority carried by these figures testifies to certain socially produced objectivities which elicit an affective response, an embodied demand that they are listened to.

Keywords:

• authority
• experience
• affect
• biopolitics
• figure

Notes

1. See Massumi’s analysis of the affective power of Ronald Reagan for a discussion of the way in which the representational is only one aspect of the affective forces that certain figures produce and resonate (Massumi 2002).

2. In The Order of Things, Foucault refers to life as a ‘quasi-transcendental’ which is arguably similar to my concept of an outside (Foucault 1970).

3. Here ‘neoliberalisation’ refers to a general trend in industrialised regions towards a devolution of state and centralised power towards a privatisation of industry and most importantly for this argument, the saturation of power in all aspects of life as part of its dispersal.