Negotiating Liberalism and Bio-Politics: Stylizing Power in Defense of the Mall Curfew

摘要

While Michel Foucault's “technologies of the self” are useful in explaining the convergence of liberalism and bio-politics, they fail to account for the appeal of juridical mechanisms that administer the conventions of bio-political control. A productive site from which to explore this convergence is provided by the “mall curfew,” a bio-political mechanism designed to normalize the shopping experience and discipline the site's youth culture. Public justifications for the mall curfew legitimize and stylize its power by targeting a scene of life rather than individual agents, and by emanating from the private realm of the family.