ABSTRACT
Openings can invite, assuage and sway, but they can also repulse and repel. The threshold for entry to a given discourse is always undecided. This chapter concerns that technocracy, despite the earnest interventions of radical criminology, continues to reign supreme over most criminological discourses. As is well known, Foucault’s work on governmentality draws attention to a certain art of government involved with the ‘conduct of conduct’. He argues that during the 16th century, a distinctively different conception and way of exercising power from those associated with sovereign, monarchic practices emerged. There are many ways in which signs can be used in constellations that comprise a given discourse. How these signs relate to other signs is important for the sense of a text. Perhaps, by contrast, in a post-disciplinary ethos, where sociology and criminology face new forms of fragmentation, it may be appropriate to leave open the question of which style to privilege.
