In an interview in 1977 Michel Foucault proposed the term dispositif for a heterogeneous set of discourses, practices, architectural forms, regulations, laws, and knowledges connected together into an apparatus of government. Drawing upon later articulations of the concept by Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben, and exploring a range of innovations in the ‘management’ of urban life, this paper reworks Foucault's concept as a means for understanding—and potentially contesting—new modes of government that have emerged in response to the crisis of climate change. Against understandings of ‘government’ in terms of a totalizing plan from which new practices and technologies usher forth, this paper emphasizes the ad hoc, and ex post facto nature of ‘government’ as a set of diverse and loosely connected efforts to introduce ‘economy’ into existing relations in response to a perceived ‘crisis’. The paper concludes by exploring Agamben's notion of ‘profanation’ as an adequate political response to the dispositif of resilient urbanism.
BussoliniJ2010, “What is a dispositif?”Foucault Studies1085–107
7.
CasarinoC, 2008, “Time matters: Marx, Negri, Agamben, and the Corporeal”, in In Praise of the Common Eds CasarinoCNegriA (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)
8.
ClarkN, 2011Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet (Sage, London)
9.
CollierS, 2008, “Enacting catastrophe: Preparedness, insurance, budgetary rationalization”Economy and Society37224–250
10.
CollierS, 2009, “Topologies of power: Foucault's analysis of political government beyond ‘governmentality’”Theory, Culture and Society2678–108
11.
CollierSLakoffA, 2008, “The vulnerability of vital systems: How ‘critical infrastructure’ became a security problem”, in The Politics of Securing the Homeland: Critical Infrastructures, Risk and Securitisation Eds CaveltyM DKristensenK S (Routledge, New York) pp 17–39
12.
DavisM, 2010, “Who will build the ark?”New Left Review6129–46
13.
DeleuzeG, 1988b, “What is a dispositif?”, in Michel Foucault, Philosopher Ed. ArmstrongT (Routledge, New York) pp 159–168
14.
DeleuzeG, 1992, “Postscript on the societies of control”October593–7
15.
FeuerA, 2012, “Protecting the city, before next time”The New York Times 3 November
16.
FoucaultM, 1980, “The confession of the flesh”, in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings Ed. GordonC (Pantheon Books, New York) pp 194–228
17.
FoucaultM, 2007Security, Territory, Population (Palgrave Macmillan, New York)
18.
FoucaultM, 2008The Birth of Biopolitics (Palgrave Macmillan, New York)
19.
GidwaniV, 2008Capital Interrupted: Agrarian Development and the Politics of Work in India (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)
20.
HarawayD, 1990Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (Routledge, London)
21.
KitchenRDodgeM, 2011Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
22.
KittlerF, 1999Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA)
23.
KleinN, 2008Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Metropolitan Books, New York)
24.
LatourB, 1992, “Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artefacts”, in Shaping Technology/Building Society Ed. BijkeW L (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA) pp 225–258
25.
LeggS, 2011, “Assemblage/apparatus: Using Deleuze and Foucault”Area43128–133
MacKinnonDDericksonK, forthcoming, “From resilience to resourcefulness: A critique of resilience policy and activism”Progress in Human Geography
28.
MarresN, 2011, “The costs of public involvement: Everyday devices of carbon accounting and the materialization of participation”Economy and Society40510–533
29.
MassumiB, 2009, “National enterprise emergency: Steps toward an ecology of powers”Theory, Culture and Society26153–185
30.
MeyerhoffEJohnsonEBraunB, 2011, “Time and the university”Acme: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies10483–507
31.
NegriT, 2005Time for Revolution (Continuum, London)
32.
NelsonS, 2012, “Adapting to climate change: From resilience to ‘transformability’”, paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Association of American Geographers, New York, 24–28 February
33.
NordensenGSeavittCYarinskyA, 2010On the Water: Palisades Bay (Distributed Art Publishers, New York)
34.
RoseNMillerP1992, “Political power beyond the state: Problematics of government”British Journal of Sociology43173–205
35.
RockstromJ, 2009, “Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity”Ecology and Society14(2) 32
36.
ShepardM, 2011Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
37.
SimondonG, 1992, “The genesis of the individual”, in Incorporations Eds CraryJKwinterS (Zone Books, New York) pp 297–319
38.
StieglerB, 1998Technics and Time I: The Fault of Epimetheus (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA)
39.
SwyngedouwE, 2010, “Apocalypse forever? Post-political populism and the spectre of climate change”Theory, Culture and Society27213–232
40.
TerranovaT, 2009, “Another life: The nature of political economy in Foucault's genealogy of biopolitics”Theory, Culture and Society26234–262
41.
ThriftN, 2012, “The insubstantial pageant: Producing an untoward land”Cultural Geographies19141–168
42.
ToscanoA, 2011, “Divine management: Critical remarks on Giorgio Agamben's The Kingdom and the Glory”Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities16125–136
