ABSTRACT
This chapter gives the historical context and a new theoretical framework from which to understand propaganda. Through the work of Michel Foucault and extensive archival research on figures like Ivy L. Lee and Edward Bernays, this chapter argues that the popular view that propaganda is best defined as lies or deception mistakes the means for the end. Propagandists are not primarily interested in epistemology but in the government of conduct: their focus is not what the publics believe but what they do. If lies are present in propaganda, then it is almost always as a means to influence conduct. Moreover, lies and deception are not even the preferred means of governing conduct. The archives show that propagandists found falsehoods an unstable and too easily reversible means to govern conduct and instead preferred to govern conduct through transforming the subjectivity of their target publics. Put otherwise, their goal was to transform their target publics into the kind of publics who willingly and cooperatively undertook the conduct propagandists’ clients desired. Propaganda is best viewed as an apparatus of government that aims to work through subjectification, rather than as deception, lies, and falsehood. This chapter also explains how propaganda was renamed public relations in the era after World War I.
