Habit has long preoccupied a wide range of theologians, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists. In Habit’s Pathways Tony Bennett explores the political consequences of the varied ways in which habit’s repetitions have been acted on to guide or direct conduct. Bennett considers habit’s uses and effects across the monastic regimens of medieval Europe, in plantation slavery and the factory system, through colonial forms of rule, and within a range of medicalized pathologies. He brings these episodes in habit’s political histories to bear on contemporary debates ranging from its role in relation to the politics of white supremacy to the digital harvesting of habits in practices of algorithmic governance. Throughout, Bennett tracks how habit’s repetitions have been articulated differently across divisions of class, race, and gender, demonstrating that although habit serves as an apparatus for achieving success, self-fulfillment, and freedom for the powerful, it has simultaneously served as a means of control over women, racialized peoples, and subordinate classes.
Note on the Text vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Habit—Then and Now 1
1. Powering Habit 19
2. Dead Ends and Nonstarters: Habit, Discipline, Biopower, and the Circulation of Capital 46
3. Unwilled Habits: Descending Pathways 70
4. Pathways to Virtue 97
5. Unfolding Pathways: Habit, Freedom, Becoming 111
6. Exploded Pathways: Plasticity's Mentors 137
7. Progressive Pathways: The Dynamics of Modernity, Race, and the Unconscious 160
8. Contested Pathways: Habit and the Conduct of Conduct 184
Conclusion. The Arbitrariness of Habit 206
Notes 211
References 225
Index 243
Tony Bennett is Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University and Honorary Professor in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. Among his many books are Making Culture, Changing Society and, as coauthor, Collecting, Ordering, Governing: Anthropology, Museums, and Liberal Government.
