The specific intellectual's pivotal position: action, compassion and thinking in administrative society, an Arendtian view

摘要: Political action is frequently conceptualised as starting from the ground up. Plausible this point may be, it pays insufficient attention to well-established arguments that we inhabit administrative society, implicitly contrasted against political with technocrats operating requisite power/knowledge grid away street. Like Foucault's ‘specific intellectuals’, work in pivotal positions apparatuses of population regulation, but nevertheless can potentially recognise plight marginalised ‘masses’ they themselves are also alienated subject-objects regulation. This article draws on a range ethnographic encounters working diverse areas migration management European Union prompt an examination historical and social conditions impede, often render unthinkable, direct engagement between migrants whom paid regulate. The explicitly Hannah Arendt's vita activa, compassion, thinking, judging revolution (1) explain how apparatus's systemic isolation both its policy experts targets impedes (2) identify form might help overcome it.