how old is modern bureaucracy (does age matter?)
“Weber placed the birth of modern bureaucracies in the nineteenth century, and Foucault and Bourdieu placed that birth two centuries before.” says Irene Silverblatt. I love Weber and Foucault, just like every other queer political philosopher enthusiast, but I’m a baby and I don’t think I understand Weber and Foucault deep enough to know why it matters.
For the first little part of Silverblatt’s prologue, I was really following! I read a little of The Protestant Ethic + The Spirit of Capitalism! I read some of Discipline and Punish! (I’m not sure this is the particualr Foucault work in mention actually). And I got an A+ in all classes that I had to read those texts so I assumed I got it, but then I realized, wow, I’m not enough of either a Foucault or Weber stan to defend either of them in their interpretations of when modern bureaucracy started. Anyways, Silverplatt is a Foucault-Bourdieu stan and agrees that modern bureaucracy starts from the Spanish Inquistion, hence the title of the book I guess?
But for me, modern bureaucracy is like a symbol or a descriptive tool. Like, I’m not really too concerned at the exact year feudalism or capitalism or late-stage capitalism became a thing becuase it’s already passed, you know? I’d be more concerned with when the worldd is supposed to fall apart and everyone’s gonna die. If we said climate change is gonna kill us all in two years I don’t think it would have anything to do with the exact timeline of when enough factories were built for it to be considered capitalism. They are ideal categories for our usage and ease, after all.
Then perhaps, if Weber, Foucault, and Bordieu are bureaucracy haters, maybe the way we have to reorganize hierarchies are dependent on when bureaucracy rose. Maybe the interlinkages of its rise have much to do with colonialism, extractivism, individualism, much like capitalism. Perhaps I’m thinking of history in too much of a linear way, and maybe even the largest systemic sense. Maybe it is important to know now to see if it will repeat itself? Or maybe it’s important to know now because we can try to adopt elements of a pre-bureaucratic society?
What a late blog post, oopsie.
The nest one will be out in the following seven hours.
Annie
"Perhaps I’m thinking of history in too much of a linear way, and maybe even the largest systemic sense." So many questions, all important and fascinating. Thank you for giving us this blog post to think about. I will only say that to answer them, in my opinion, we cannot leave aside the systemic perspective. In an archeology of bureaucratism (ah, Foucault, you died 40 years ago!) we could also find the prehistory of our current catastrophe. You may be interested in reading an author like David Graber.