Audit, neoliberal governmentality, and authoritarian control

Singapore stands out as a "model" of governmentality that travels across Asia, with a seductive appeal that is built on the mechanisms of authoritarian control that it consistently deploys to silence dissent.

Many of these techniques of authoritarian control, deployed in Singapore, are not the grotesque authoritarian excesses one witnessed in China three decades ago at Tiananmen Square, or ones that one witnesses now.

The authoritarian control exercised in Singapore is sophisticated, dressed up in the language of democracy. Meant to produce processes of internalization such that disciplined subjects self-censor, knowing from model performances of control the price to be paid for not towing the line.

Seemingly democratic forms of management, directed at producing supposed clean governance, are often the tools deployed to control dissent and silence alternative voices.

One such tool, dressed up as an instrument of clean governance, is the audit.

The audit is deployed in specific settings to mark and target critical voices that document the excesses of the state, its limits and failures, and the large gaps in its model of governance. In these scenarios, as a disciplinary tool, the audit is designed to invoke fear in the person targeted.

It is meant to destroy the very courage or conviction that threatens the structure.

In the very act of targeting, the audit sends out its chilling message, toe the line or else.

Irrespective then of the outcome of the audit or the veracity/ridiculousness of the allegations made, the audit is used as a tool to plant and spread disinformation, planting the seed of doubt about the person alleged to have participated in irregular behavior.

It also works to send out a message to all those around, you follow similar pathways of critiquing, you will be targeted, bullied, and maligned. Authoritarian control works perfectly in alignment with neoliberal governmentality, enabling the profit-extracting role of the state through techniques of disciplining in everyday organizational life.

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...

Upper caste Indian women in the diaspora, DEI, and the politics of hate

Figure 1: Trump, Vance and their partners responding to the remarks by Mariann Edgar Budde Emergent from the struggles of the civil rights movement , led by African Americans , organized against the oppressive history of settler colonialism and slavery that forms the backbone of US society, structures around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) formed an integral role in forging spaces for diverse recognition and representation. These struggles around affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion were at the heart of the changes to white only immigration policies, building pathways for migration of diverse peoples from the Global South. The changes to the immigration policies created opportunities for Indians to migrate to the US, with a rise of Indian immigration into the US since the 1970s into educational institutions, research and development infrastructures, and technology-finance infrastructures. These migratory structures into the US were leveraged by l...

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit...

Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

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