Institutional Thought(s): Diagrams of Power and the Constitutive Power of the Multitude
Ronald Walter Greene, University of Minnesota
Position paper prepared for the University of South Carolina Rhetorical Theory Conference
Octoberr 15-17, 2009
Institutions play an important role in my theoretical and historical work. Warranted by the uptake
Foucauldian approaches to policy and government in cultural policy studies, institutions have been a key
point of contact between power and discourse for exploring the process of subjectification. My work is
awash in claims about institutions. For example, theoretically, I have argued that a material approach to
rhetorical effectivity must focus on the institutional uptake of trope, arguments, and technologies (Greene,
1998, 1999, 2009). A theoretically claim that I have historically performed by focusing on how Malthusian
modes of reasoning interact with both state and global institutions, whether they be the U.S. Presidency
or the United Nations International Conferences on Development (Greene, 1999). Moreover, my critical
histories of rhetorical pedagogy have been motivated by an effort to resist claims that attention to the
practices of persuasion in everyday life means one should abandon a study of the institutional history of
rhetoric, an institutional history located squarely within formal educational institutions, like college debate
programs, but, also informal educational institutions like the YMCA or PCI-Media Impact (Greene &
Kuswa, 2002; Greene, 2004; Greene & Hicks, 2005; Greene & Breshears, forthcoming). More recently, I
have claimed that the interface between the rhetorical and the institutional may be a crucial site of
articulation for exploring the mobility of some “technologies of public persuasion” to circulate while others
may not (Greene, 2009). However, while such an institutional move is meant to link texts to their external
coordinates more than their internal dynamics, a reliance on institutions as sites for the reception of
discourses and the production of arguments, tropes and technologies becomes precariously dependent
on the archival tendencies of particular institutions.
One advantage of an institutional analysis has been to make concrete how institutions produce subjects
through the rituals, practices and actions they call on the subject to rhetorically perform to become
subjects of the institution. But such an institutional approach may not escape the critique of functionalism
and may authorize a rather unfoucauldian interest in the internal mechanisms of institutions. To follow
Foucault is to displace the institution. His resistance to an institutional-centric approach is expressed in a
lecture dated 8 February 1978: “In short, the point of view adopted in all these studies [of the disciplines]
involved the attempt to free relations of power from the institution, in order to analyze them from the point
of view of technologies; to distinguish them also from the function, so as to take them up within a strategic
analysis; and to detach them from the privilege of the object, so as to resituate them within the
perspective of the constitution of fields, domains and objects of knowledge” ( 2007, p. 118). Three
methodological displacements of the institution: First, look outside the institution to account for its
insertion into a technology of power; second, describe the strategies and tactics that produce and activate
the institution as much because it fails than despite its failures; third, resituate the institution into a field of
knowledge to displace the institutions own measurements inherent to its functional object. The aim is to
allow the institution to become a site to which the technology of power finds “expression, intensity and
density” at the same time as the institution partakes in a “whole network of alliances, communications,
and points of support” (p. 117). One may start with the rhetorical products and/or subjects of an institution
but one should end with a diagram of the lines that traverse a dispositif (Deleuze, 1989, p. 159). Whether
one then translates a dispositif as a technology of power as an apparatus, or as an abstract machine, the
implications are similar: there is a broader context to which one is supposed to insert the institution; an
outside that the institution is inside.
A couple of questions: might the dispositif run the risk of becoming the determining feature, the structure
or logic to which the institution activates. Has the institution in its expression of the technology of power
become the superstructure to the dispositif’s mode of production? By signaling the “network of alliances,
communications and points of support” as the point of a genealogical analysis do we risk becoming
“institutionally indifferent” (Bennett, p. 91) to the particulars of the institution under investigation? If so, this
would displace how Foucault’s methods allowed one to speak of the birth of the asylum, the birth of the
clinic and the birth of the prison from the bottom up, from the microphysics of power traversing the
institution and proliferating beyond its walls. The institution cannot merely be an instrument of the general
economy of a technology of power; an institution has its concrete forms that while owing much to its
outside nonetheless has its own configuration and set of constitutional coordinates. For example, while
one might point to how the clinic, prison and asylum might share in a general technology of discipline by
sequestering and enclosing populations, the public museum, in contrast, did not work to sequester and
enclose populations, but encouraged the “mixing and intermingling of publics” (Bennett, p. 93).
Moreover, even in light of the disciplinary similarity between the clinic, prison and asylum, they
nonetheless work with different substances (the prisoner, the mad, the patient) and have different
functions. There is a difference between the exile of the leper and the partitioning of the plague victim
(Deleuze, 1989, p. 42). What is external to the institution is the diagram. As Deleuze reads Foucault:
“the diagram or abstract machine is the map of relations between forces … [it] is like the cause of the
concrete assemblages that execute its relations; and these relations between forces take place not above
but within the very tissue of the assemblages they produce” (1988, pp.36-37). One methodologically
performs an externalization to assess the immanent relationship between the diagram and its concrete
assemblages. Put differently, only in the effects of the concrete assemblages can the diagrams causality
be distinguished. In trying to clarify the meaning of an institution we have added another concept to the
mix: not simply the diagram/abstract machine/apparatus but the concrete assemblage.
Reading Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, Deleuze notes D&P gives a positive character to what was
described negatively in Archeology of Knowledge as “non-discursive environments such as ‘institutions,
political events, economic practices and processes’.” (p. 31). The prison exists as one of these nondiscursive environments that is now given concrete existence as a “form of content where the content is
the prisoner).” A form of content is never too far from a form of expression. The form of expression takes
the place of statements previously described in Archeology of Knowledge. Thus, the form of expression
referred to by the prison is penal law and its statements about delinquency. But, the form of content
manifested in the prison is not an order of discourse as it is with a form of expression but, as Deleuze
remarks, a system of light. The form of content works visually while the form of expression works
linguistically. While the form of content and form of expression refer to one another they are not
homogenous; “they do not have the same form, and do not have the same formation.” What we have is a
“mutual presupposition operating between the two forms, yet there is no common form, no conformity, not
even correspondence” between the visible and the articulable. If one can, without stumbling, identify the
prison as an institution we do so because the institution as a form of content is a system of light we know
as panopticism. From such a conceptualization, an institution exists as a visual rhetoric making some
things visible and invisible while forms of expression manage to create new objects of knowledge. Two
different lines Deleuze refers to as lines of visibilities and lines of enunciation (1989, p. 160) are
embodied in the form of content and form of expression. In both cases, form organizes matter and it
finalizes functions. As such, a form of content and a form of expression both have within them an
organized matter and function. For example, Deleuze writes, “Not only the prison but the hospital, the
school, the barracks and the workshop are formed matter. Punishment is a formalized function, as is care,
education, training, or enforced work” (p.33). Since a form of content and a form of expression
intermingle, one might suggest an institution exists within the concrete assemblage produced by the
mutual interaction of the form of content and the form of expression. The diagram is the abstraction of the
forms and functions from the concrete assemblage. Following Deleuze’s reading, Foucault does not then
place the diagram in a position of the transcendental sovereign because “the diagrammatic multiplicity
can be realized and the differential of forces integrated only by taking diverging paths, splitting into
dualism, and following lines of differentiation” realized in the divergence or differentiation of the form of
expression and a form of content. Because the diagram is an abstraction of form, it is informal; it requires
its realization in the form of visible matter and articulable functions. The non-place between the form of
content and form of expression is the “place” where the informal diagram is “swallowed up and becomes
embodied instead in two different directions that are necessarily divergent and irreducible” p.1988, p. 38).
A history of assemblages exists in the encounters between the visible and the articulable as each of
“these forms neither enclose nor interiorize anything; they are ‘forms of exteriority’ though which either
statements or visible things are dispersed” (p.43). To put it in a rhetorical idiom, we do not go from
outside in (context to text) but go from inside out to learn how the outside makes the assemblage.
A lot of conceptual work goes into the answer what is an institution? First and foremost it is a visual
rhetoric, visible matter that makes the visible and invisible articulated to an expressed set of functions,
purposes and aims discursively oriented to an object of knowledge. But it is always approached from a
position of exteriority; first in terms of the institutions formal content and them with the encounter between
the form of content and a form of expression. The concrete assemblage of the differential forms is than
externalized again as the articulation of the realized effect of the pure form and function of an abstract
diagram. Yet, before rushing to the diagram, work needs to be done on those encounters between the
visible and the sayable, those moments when a formal content interacts with a formal expression. It is in
these encounters that a living substance finds it form in a concrete assemblage. As such, perhaps the
rhetorical is useful as a name for this encounter.
To draw a contrast to the foucauldian-deleuzian sketch of an institution, I want to highlight the category of
institution as it exists in Anglo-American social sciences. In an oft-cited paper, Geoffrey Hodgson (2006)
defines institutions as “systems of established and prevalent social rules that structure social interactions.
Language, money, law, systems of weights and measure, table manners and firms (and other
organizations) are thus all institutions.” Beginning with the idea that institutions are social rules, Steven
Fleetwood (2008) argues that “recognition that (a) rules are similar to conventions, norms, values, and
customs, and (b) that institutions consist of rules, allows me to augment my initial definition thus:
institutions are systems of established rules, conventions, norms, values and customs; institutions consist
of, or are constituted by established rules, conventions, norms, values and customs” (p. 247). In this
case, institutions are not reducible to the formed matter of an organization because they express social
rules, norms and conventions that traverse any given organization at the same time as any one
organization exists as an institution (in the sense they create social rules that structure interactions of
those within the organization). These rules are not necessarily spoken, in fact, for rules to be effective
requires that they “never be purely or fully matters of conscious deliberation” (Hodgson, 2006, p. 4). But,
why might people follow the rules? A central answer provided is the role of habit. For example, Hodgson
writes: “habits are the constitutive material of institutions, providing them with enhanced durability, power
and normative authority. In turn, by reproducing shared habits of thought, institutions create strong
mechanisms of conformism and normative agreement (p.7). The social-cultural dimension of institutions
is primarily located in this process of habituation by which actors internalize the norms and rules of
institutions, which preceded their existence. Institutions, Hodgson argues, have “the capacity to change
aspirations instead of merely enabling or constraining them. Habit is a key mechanism in this
transformation. Institutions are social structures that can involve reconstitutive downward causation,
acting to some degree upon individual habits of thought and action” (p. 7). Human agency is not held
hostage to the rules of institutions because habituation is primarily a psychological process that makes
possible the objective and subjective character of institutional norms.
Once we note the distinction between institutional structure and human agency that exists in the social
science literature we can appreciate the distinction between the new and old institutionalism. As Berk
and Galvan (2009) argue the old institutionalism emphasized the power of institutions to create order
while the new institutionalism “shifted analysis towards the conditions under which institutions emerge,
function, and change”(p. 545). Yet, Berk and Galvan note a lingering structural bias in the new
institutionalism manifested in the tendency to read agency off of structural gaps to explain institutional
change (p. 548). In contrast, Berk and Galvan offer a strong sense of human agency grounded in a
Dewey’s concept of habit. Berk and Galvan write: “Habits, in our view, stand in for rule-in-action. They
anchor an experiential account of how people follow rules, use rules, and perturb rules in ways that are
never exactly the same. Habits live and thrive in ambiguity. And they cannot help but necessitate
deliberation and their own transformation” (p.551). From this standpoint, habits do not provide the
psychological link between the objective and subjective dimension of institutions; they provide the
experiential base for the creative adaption, use and transformation of the institutional norms, rules,
customs and values. Habits and institutions begin to change when impulse “overflows the structure of
existing habits, sometimes refuse to be domesticated, and is central to how we understand the
reformulation of habit itself” (Berk and Galvan, 2009, p. 554). Beck and Galvin then identify three key
modes of impulsive motion: raw action, creative deliberation and routine with creative deliberation
providing the energy for the creative syncretism Beck and Galvin emphasis as the agential power of
institutional change. This creative deliberation is, of course, a favorite place to access the rhetorical.
Berk and Galvan’s strong theory of human agency, expressed in moments of creative deliberation, is a
more likely place to discover the rhetorical in an institutional analysis than the encounter between the
forms of content and the forms of expression that make up a complex assemblage. But lets take
advantage of the subjective dimension provided by Berk and Galvan’s turn to habit and impulse, but do
so with an eye less toward the rhetorical subjectivity of the orator and more toward the production of the
common. For Hardt and Negri, the pragmatist interest in habits provides an important resource for
understanding the production of the common because “habits create a nature that serves as the basis of
life … habits and conduct are shared and social. They are produced and reproduced in interaction and
communication with others. Habits are never really individual or personal. Individual habits, conduct, and
subjectivity only arise on the basis of social conduct, communication, acting in common. Habits constitute
or social nature” (2004, p. 197). Hardt and Negri insist on the common ontology of habits and not their
individual characteristics: “habits are living practice, the site of creation and innovation … that from the
standpoint of social communication and collaboration, we have in common enormous power to innovate
… Habits are the common basis of which all creation takes place. Habits form … an ontology of social
practice in common” (p. 198). While not sufficient, the pragmatic notion of habits allows Hardt and Negri
to posit the concept of the multitude as arising from this social ontology of common production. In a
passage that deserves more unpacking than I can provide here, Hardt and Negri argue, “Singularities
interact and communicate socially on the basis of the common, and their social communication in turn
produces the common. The multitude is the subjectivity that emerges from this dynamic of singularity and
commonality” (p. 198).
As I have argued elsewhere, one cannot bring Dewey forward to the present conjuncture to craft a
deliberative citizen without also recognizing that the very pedagogical dimensions offered for such a
rhetorically sensitive subject are the very skills of immaterial labor required of postfordist capitalism
(Greene 2003). A strong individualist sense of human agency underwriting rhetorical subjectivity merely
provides capitalism with a standing reserve willing to sell his/her labor power as rhetorical capital to
corporations of public persuasion (Greene 2003). Hardt and Negri, posit the name Empire to describe the
new diagram of power operative today that increasingly organizes itself by learning how to exploit the
production of the common. In the immanent unfolding of empire the concrete assemblages of common
production differentiate, break into two positing the vampiric tendency of empire on the one side and the
activate potential of the multitude on the other capable of producing empire’s outside from the production
of the common. What is to be done is not so much the multitude’s institutionalization as its organization.
References
Bennett, T. (1995). The birth of the museum: History, theory, politics. London: Routledge.
Berk, G. & Galvan D (2009). How people experience and change institutions: A field guide to creative
syncretism. Theory and Society, 38, 543-580.
Deleuze, G. (1988). Foucault. Sean Hand (Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. (1991). What is a Dispositif? In T. Armstrong (Ed.), Michel Foucault Philosopher (pp. 159168). London: Routledge.
Fleetwood, S. (2008). Institutions and social structures. Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior 38,
241- 265.
Foucault, M. (2007). Five: 8 February 1978. In Michele Senellart (Ed.) Graham Burchell (Trans.)
Security, Territory Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-1978 (pp. 115-134). New York:
Palgrave.
Greene, R.W. (1998). Another materialist rhetoric. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 15, 21-41.
Greene, R.W. (1999). Malthusian Worlds: US Leadership and the governing of the population crisis.
Boulder, CO: Westview.
Greene, R.W. (2003). John Dewey’s eloquent citizen: Communication, judgment and postmodern
capitalism. Argumentation and Advocacy, 189-200.
Greene, R.W. (2009). Rhetorical materialism: Rhetorical subjectivity and the general intellect. In B.
Biesecker and J. Lucaities (Eds.). Rhetoric, materiality and politics (pp. 43-66). New York: Peter Lang.
Greene, R.W. & Kuswa, K.D. (2002). Governing Balkanization at home: Liberalism and the rhetorical
production of citizenship. Controversia: An International Journal of Debate and Democratic Renewal 1,
16- 33.
Greene, R.W. & Hicks, D. (2005). Lost convictions: Debating both sides and the ethical self-fashioning of
liberal citizens. Cultural Studies, 19, 101-127
Greene, R.W. & Breshears, D. (forthcoming). Bio-political media: Population Communications
International and the governing of reproductive health. In P. Suakko and L. Reed (Eds.). Governing the
female body: Health, gender and networks of power. Albany: SUNY Press.
Hardt, M. & Negri, A (2004). Multitude: War and democracy in the age of empire. New York: Penguin
Press.
Hodgson, G.M. (2006). What are institutions? Journal of Economic Issues, XL, 1- 25.