ABSTRACT
In semiotic terms, the phrase 'cultural governance' is a syntagm that comprehends a variety of ways in and through which the paradigms of culture and governance can be combined. The argument of this chapter is that insofar as governance as myth is hegemonic, it conditions power relations and the cultural policy that is formed within them and its actions on culture in whatever sense. Brown's critique of governance is based on the claim that it depoliticises through the erasure of agency and its replacement with processes as a consequence of what Lemke refers to as 'the eclipse or erosion of state sovereignty'. Governance discourse is a way of making sense of conditions in order to act on them. Although there is probably no single point of origin, the emergence of its mythic sense can be traced in its development by institutions and organisations that responded to the situation that had emerged in the 1970s.
