Calculating the Human

Universal Calculability in the Age of Quality Assurance

L. Doria

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137313485
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Accounting
• Index: Business

Why does contemporary calculation develop as calculation of the quality of everything? How should we consider calculation of quality and the relationship between calculation and enhancement of life? These and related questions are addressed through phenomenological investigation and a critical analysis of the social science debate.

1

Calculation, Quality and Life: A First Look at the Debate

1.1 A prologue: Notes on the transformation of the human as an object of calculation

In recent years, the human and social sciences have witnessed, within various disciplinary perspectives, a renewed interest in reflection on calculation. Because of the problematic definition of calculation as the object of analysis, such reflection does not take the form of an organic debate. Instead, it develops as a set of analytical paths, often linked by significant connections, which focus on the various dimensions of contemporary calculative scenarios, from the morphology of calculation processes to the ‘performativity’ of calculation in organizational and socio-economic life, from the link between calculability and managerial rationality to the ties between calculation, power and institutional structures, and up to and including the relationship between calculation, agency and democracy.

Many of these lines of thought touch on some important issues for my investigation of the calculation of the human and its relationship with quality – they will be the focus of dialogue within this work, starting in the present chapter, in some cases.

It is not my intention, in this prologue, to provide a synthesis of the debate; I will instead make an initial reference to a meta-issue that has recently profoundly marked the entire reflection on calculation, man and life, and that will be the subject of particular attention throughout my analytic trajectory. I refer to the transformation of the human as the ‘object’ of calculation – and of the nature itself of the calculative intervention on the human – in the scenario defined by the evolution of biogenetic and computer sciences.

Until some time ago, the expression ‘calculation of the human’ could allude to the calculation (to measurement, normalization, control and administration) of various aspects and ambits of human life.

Certainly the reference to calculation of the human pointed towards different dimensions: from the treatment of the ‘quantitative’¹ aspects of life (length of life, natality and mortality) to the calculation of social life in all its determinants, to the increasingly detailed diagnosis of psychological, emotional and affective well-being. In this calculation scene, however, it seemed possible to retain the reference to an image of man (and of man in society). Certainly, this image could be considered as being continually reshaped by the operations of calculation and representation of life, without this then casting doubt on the distinction between the human sphere and that of non-human things.

However, what has come to our attention ever more forcefully in recent decades is a radical transformation of the scenario. This transformation has to do with the advent of forms of manipulation, recomposition and reshaping of man that are so strong that they pose in a new way the question of what man is, and on the way in which the distinction between the human and the non-human should be understood.

I will dwell on how this transformation is borne out by the reshaping of the theoretical perspective that interprets the nature and the proliferation of the processes of calculation in the light of Foucault’s reflections on governmentality and biopolitics² (see in particular, Foucault, 2007; 2008).

It will be useful to consider, although very briefly, some moments of the Foucauldian studies, not only because they have played a major role in the debate on calculation of social life, but also because the Foucaldian perspective has constituted itself, as we will see later, as a particularly powerful and flexible theoretical framework for the interpretation of the quality–calculation nexus.

The complex branch of research that has developed around Foucault’s thought on the transformation of power and government has been one of the richest and most fertile trends in the panorama of human and social sciences in recent decades.

In particular, the school of thought commonly known as the Anglo-Foucauldians has contributed significantly to the investigation on the morphology and performativity of the calculative practices that pervade contemporary organizations and societies (see Hopwood, 1992; Miller, 1992; 2001; Miller and O’Leary, 1994; Miller and Napier, 1993; Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose 1990; 1991; 1992; 1996).

The influence of this branch of analysis – and in particular the studies on accounting practices, understood in the broadest sense³ – can be recognized not only in the studies on economic calculation⁴ (and thus in the analysis of how calculative practices represent and shape economic processes and institutions), but also in the broader reflection on government and power in social life.

One of the ways in which Foucaldian studies have renewed the debate on calculation concerns the analysis of the historically and spatially differentiated ways in which calculating selves and calculable spaces are produced. What is at issue, therefore, is what Miller refers to as the individualization, responsibilization, calculation triptych and thus the close link between calculation practices and the making of subjectivities which are capable of self-regulating and selfgoverning. The multiplication of calculative regimes is thus seen as strictly related to the production of the possibility for individuals to act upon themselves and to be acted upon in turn. As Miller (1992, p. 63) wrote:

Subjectivity or selfhood in this sense is of interest in two respects: it refers to the possibility of being subject to regulation or control by someone else; and yet it also emphasizes how practices of the self operate by mechanisms that tether one’s own identity to oneself by self-knowledge and self-regulation.

The subjectivities that appear in the contemporary calculative spaces are therefore the object of control and management operations, and at the same time are free subjects, able to define their own goals, to make choices in view of achieving those goals, and to be responsible for those choices with respect to themselves and to others. This is a result of the multiplication of accounting practices and calculative regimes that bring the actions of ‘free’ subjects into accord with specific objectives (Miller, 1992).

We are thus faced with an interpretation of the relationship between calculation and government that alludes to the great Foucauldian theme concerning power relations as defined not merely by its effect on others, but by its effect on the actions of others, where the latter are constructed as responsible subjects, endowed with the freedom to act in one way or another.

The relationship between calculation and government is thus considered from a perspective in which government, as an exercise of power, has to do with the definition of the possible field of action of others, and the ability to act upon the actions occurring in that field (Miller, 1992).

The interpretation of calculation from the perspective of governmentality (and its neo-liberal form) endows the Foucauldian perspective with a considerable capacity for interpreting the proliferation of calculative processes and their performativity.⁵

Considering calculative practices as technologies of power has allowed the vast interdisciplinary literature to analyse the differentiated and changing morphology and the multiple rationalities of calculative processes. The reference is, for example, to the Foucauldian studies on human resource management (see for instance Barrat, 200; Townley, 1993) and to technologies of control, auditing, standardization, self-diagnosis and performance measurement that have developed in this field.

The vastly accelerated practices relating to the measurement of emotions, affections and feelings are particularly significant.⁶ That field of calculative processes, which aims explicitly at calculating the most incalculable aspects of the self, develops under the heading of the optimization of the performance of the human resource – whose ‘exploitational’ horizon, by the way, goes far beyond the limits of work to include, ever more completely, the entire life of the worker.

The calculative technologies of the self are then seen as marching, in an increasingly pervasive way, towards the governing of the soul (Rose, 1989).

As Rose (1992, p. 142 quoted in Rapley, 2003) pointed out:

The guidance of selves is no longer dependent upon the authority of religion or traditional morality; it has been allocated to ‘experts of subjectivity’ who transfigure existential questions about the purpose of life and the meaning of suffering into technical questions about the most effective ways of managing malfunction and improving ‘quality of life’.

The pervasiveness of calculation, however, is clearly not merely a question of the unconditional proliferation of disciplinary practices. On the contrary, it is a phenomenon that points towards what Foucault⁷ highlighted as the dense intersections between power as discipline and governmental power.

And, as we will see later, the intersection and mutual support between the ‘disciplinary’ and ‘governmental’ dimensions of power is a phenomenon that emerges in a distinctive shape precisely in the universe of the calculation and management of quality (of life).

The increasingly extreme calculability of the self – and the related technologies of (self)control, inspection, reporting, auditing and standardization – becomes part of complex and dynamic governmental architectures in which the governing of the individual life and performance, the management of ‘targeted’ sub-populations and the administration of the population as a whole become ever more closely interrelated.

The link between calculation, production of responsible subjectivities and neo-liberal governmentality forms a powerful interpretive key to the phenomenon of the proliferation of calculative practices well beyond the limits of the business and economic spheres.⁸

Public action, in all its dimensions, is seen as being defined by the intertwining of calculative regimes and ‘entrepreneurial’ actors, who are responsible for their own free choices and measured in terms of efficiency and performance. The multidimensional space of policy and of governance appears as a complex mesh – in continuous and often unforeseeable evolution – of calculative devices, calculable spaces and calculating subjects.

Within this framework has arisen a fertile vein of Foucaldian criticism of managerialist torsion of the public sphere (from health services to education, from scientific research to the field of care and to culture) and of the complicity between ‘managerialist’ discourse and the trend towards the commodification/marketization of social life. This is a question which, as we shall see, will dominate a significant part of the debate on quality discourse in the public sphere.

In general terms, we could say that considering calculation from the perspective of neo-liberal governmentality – and considering government from the perspective of the evolution of calculative processes and rationalities – has become a macro-theoretical framework in Foucauldian studies for interpreting what appear to be two conspicuous manifestations of the phenomenon of human calculability: the proliferation of calculation processes in all social spheres; and the gradual annexation of the most ‘incalculable’ dimensions of life.

Considering the progress of calculation in its relationship with the set-out of neo-liberal programmes of government (and thus with the morphogenesis of capitalism in the neo-liberal era) also brings with it a tendency to interpret from a certain perspective the crucial question of the ‘relationship’ between calculation and enhancement (and between calculation and enhancement of the human).

In other words, it becomes possible to consider the relationship between calculation and enhancement of life under the heading of a multitude of relationships between calculability and mobilization of the self: the calculability and resourcification of the self at work; the accountability of the policy actor as a calculating self who is expected to achieve an ever higher degree of performance; the calculability of the citizen as an individual self, whose measurable and always ‘optimizable’ quality of life is at the service of the well-being of the nation, which in its turn is involved in processes of comparison and competition with other nations. The life of the calculable self thus appears to be enhanced on a growing multiplicity of pathways.

It is precisely the significance of the ‘maximization’ of life, however, that is called into question in the scenario designed by the new possibilities of techno-scientific manipulation of man and nature. In this scenario, the meaning of enhancement of life seems to evade the possibility of being understood merely in terms of optimization, as we customarily understand it.

The frenetic developments in biogenetic, cognitive and computer sciences define a horizon in which the notion and the limits of life seem to be radically transformed. In that horizon, as Lemke sums up, ‘the image of a natural origin of all living organisms is gradually being replaced by the idea of an artificial plurality of life forms, which resemble technical artifacts more than they do natural entities’ (Lemke, 2011, p. 93).

Genetic manipulation, the sciences of transplantation and of cyborgs, and also a group of technical and scientific projects that occur at the boundary between biology and computer sciences (such as those concerning the uploading of the human mind to an artificial storage medium) profoundly alter the traditional image of body and mind, and raise the question – voiced by some in tones of considerable concern – about what remains of the human in a life subjected to intense processes of transformation.

The very relationship between life and death is called directly and brutally into question, as is evidenced by the project for the techno-scientific construction of immortal humanity. Death becomes an increasingly manipulable object: an object which one can imagine as being transferable from one body to another. As Lemke (2011, p. 95) summarizes: death can become ‘part of a productive circuit and used to improve and extend life’.

Around the issue of the trans- or post-human, a very robust interdisciplinary deba...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Calculation, Quality and Life: A First Look at the Debate
• 2. Quality and Calculation: A Phenomenological Journey
• 3. Calculation, Quality and Enhancement
• 4. Towards a Conclusion: Towards a New Look
• Notes
• References
• Index