Qualifizierende Disqualifizierung und ihre Umkehrungen

Abstract In this paper, the term “qualifying disqualification” is introduced to express an intersection of several different types of power that (in a Foucauldian terminology) are differentiated as disciplinary, sovereign, and biopolitical formations. The paper concurs with a viewpoint that has emerged in much post-Foucauldian scholarship that these should not be understood as replacing each other in a historically emerging, linear succession. The resulting question is how to interpret instances of their convergence and intersection – for example, are they best understood as mutually consolidating (as seen in some understandings of domination)? The paper points to the friction caused by a simultaneity of heterogeneous formations of power given that they are understood to “subjectivise” differently. In turn, different understandings and conducts of “capacity” and “qualification” correspond to those differences in addition to different techniques of inclusion, exclusion, and exception. “Qualifying disqualification” is proposed as a terminology to express this friction. The fields in which its implications are explored include critical race studies (particularly the work of Saidiya Hartman), “capacity”-based rights arguments, and new interpretations of power in the work of Foucault, particularly as theorised in his Collège de France lectures.