Held in Suspense

Abstract

Promises of incorporation, threats of punishment, and fragile, revocable entitlements mark the signature of a modality of governance dedicated to the production of subjects who are neither included nor excluded from political or economic orders, but who are provisionally appended to them as though hanging by a thread. A wide array of political regimes renders these subjects simultaneously indispensable and expendable. The authors examine promise, threat and revocability as modalities of governance appearing across liberal and illiberal registers as a means to displace the costs, risks and responsibilities of political and economic projects onto the indeterminate subjects they simultaneously produce. The authors ask what subjects do as they are held in suspense, by studying the collectivities, social orders, and forms of political organisation that emerge amongst subjects as they anticipate the authorisations and the censures, the arrival and the forfeiture of governance.