View article

This chapter seeks to contribute to the project of constructing a more radical, feminist-oriented diversity through the critical study of affect in Public Service. It does so by focusing on the discursive underpinnings of Public Servant identity amidst neoliberal, patriarchal ‘governmentalities’, particularly those which normalize affective labour in the form of a ‘diversified’ responsiveness to citizens-customers. Following recent post-Weberian and Foucauldian readings of Public Servant ethos, affective diversity is interpreted critically as the effect of neoliberal regimes and their commodification of emotions. Consequently, an abstract, ‘dis-affected’ diversity is conceived as the righteous horizon for Public Servant identity work, on the moral grounds of replacing a responsive-but-discriminatory disposition with an indifferent-yet-equalizing one, against the 'misguided' diversity of customer-oriented neoliberalism …