Affective Governmentality, Ordo-liberalism and Affirmative Action Policy in Higher Education

Abstract

This thesis drew on a methodological and analytical strategy bringing together Foucauldian (1980; 1984; 2001a; 2001b; 2007; 2008) onto-epistemological underpinnings and critical readings of the affective turn to explore the affirmative action policy in higher education in Chile. By critically deploying the frameworks of governmentality (Foucault, 2007; 2008) and affect (Massumi, 2002; Mazzarella, 2009), I explore the affirmative action policy as a dispositif configured by affective, discursive, and power relations that constitute the affirmative action policy and its regime of subjectification. This regime was primarily conceived as a field of forces that ambush and appeal to working-class subjects by establishing normative figures of neoliberal subjectivities that promise them broader possibilities of being recognised and desired by, in this case, respected historical formations such as universities and higher education.