the Female Body GOVERNING

Foucault, Philanthropy, and Governmentality
Pink Ribbons Inc. 89
The pages that follow explore the popular appeal of breast cancerdirected
corporate philanthropy by examining not so much why it has
gained such appeal, but how this appeal is constituted, deployed, and
understood by those who create and participate in it. Although my
analysis is concerned with the popularity of events such as the Race
for the Cure and practices such as cause-related marketing, it does not
proceed from the assumption that these phenomena simply attract
the participation of fully formed subjects and citizens. Rather, in their
capacity as fund-raising ventures; marketing enterprises, practices and
sites of consumption; physical activities; collective experiences; mass
movements; and pedagogical tools, they are technologies of power, or a
set of practices and discourses, that have constitutive effects (Foucault,
1979, 1980). Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault (1991), and
contemporary theorists of governmentality such as Nikolas Rose (1999),
I conceptualize these technologies as mechanisms of governance that
help shape identities (e.g., “the breast cancer survivor”), cultivate
political subjects (e.g., “the volunteer citizen”), and produce knowledges
and truths about breast cancer and how best it might be responded to.
Thus, through the course of my investigations, I explore the productive
functions and effects of breast cancer philanthropy and examine its
articulation to broader questions about the character of contemporary
U.S. culture and citizenship.
By analyzing these technologies of power in a broader context, my
aim is to highlight the ways in which government, or the conduct
of conduct, has in the past two decades become centrally concerned
with the production of civically active, self-responsible citizens. While
citizenship responsibilities in this confi guration are most frequently
enacted through consumption, the ideal citizen is not, to quote Nikolas
Rose (1999), “the isolated and selfi sh atom of the free market” (p. 166).
Instead, in the contemporary organization of political responsibility,
subjects are addressed and understood as individuals who are responsible
for themselves and for others in their “community.” Ideally, responsibility
is not to be demonstrated by paying taxes to support social welfare
programs or by expressing dissent and making political demands on
behalf of one’s fellow citizens. Instead, in the words of former President
Bill Clinton, Americans must be taught that “to be a good citizen, in
addition to going to work and going to school and paying your taxes and
obeying the law, you have to be involved in community service” (Hall
& Nichols, 1997, p. A12).