RECONSIDERING "FABRICATING THE PEOPLE": A REPLY TO THE SYMPOSIUM CONTRIBUTORS

I want to thank the contributors to this symposium for generously giving their time and insight to this discussion of the book, Fabricating the People: Politics and Administration in the Biopolitical State. Alexander Kouzmin, initiated this symposium several years ago. He died at his home in Australia as the symposium (among Alex's very many projects) was in process. This was a saddening, significant personal loss to those, like me, who knew Alex; to say nothing of the professional and intellectual loss his death has meant to public administration and critical management studies. In this context, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the contributors for their thoughtful papers. I am indebted, most especially, to Kym Thorne, who was indefatigable in his commitment to carrying the symposium forward in Alex's memory. PAQ's editor, Aaron Wachhaus, has my sincere appreciation for his enthusiasm about the project and patience in waiting for the collection to be completed. The symposium also benefitted from the insight of an exceptional group of reviewers, and I thank them as well. The papers in this symposium are provocative and raise compelling issues about the book. They reveal a close, sometimes intimate, familiarity with the text and have inspired me to read the book with fresh eyes and renewed enthusiasm. I cannot reply to all of the essays with the depth each warrants and so commend each to the reader's attention for closer study and to assess the quality of my own engagement with them. Here I address some of the major questions that the papers raise and areas that, I think, are most instructive in clarifying the book's aims. Before giving each essay focused-attention, I will briefly sketch the context within which the book was written and describe how this context shaped its purposes. In the process, I consider a couple of issues that cut across the contributions. Adapted from the source document.