Politics With and Without a Program: A Symptomatological Diagnosis of the State Of Work and Life in the Danish Welfare State

Abstract

This thesis offers a symptomatological diagnosis of the current state of work and life within the Danish welfare state, drawing from the critical perspectives in Ærø Manifestet by Maj My Humaidan and Arbejdets Land by Kaare Dybvad Bek. Both texts engage with the ongoing debate about what it means to live well in the welfare state, a discussion that intersects with the government's increasing emphasis on full-time employment. With theoretical and procedural inspiration from Michel Foucault, this thesis conducts an analysis of the problematizations and experiences emerging in the two books by examining the problems to which these books respond and how they are problematized. This analysis further delves into the domains of knowledge and subjectivity that enable these problems to make themselves felt as they do, exposing the experiential dimension that has a decisive influence on the positions Humaidan and Dybvad hold within the debate. While the thesis is grounded in Foucault's work, it diverges from his genealogical approach and instead employs Gilles Deleuze’s work on symptomatology. This procedure allows for engagement with the responses, problems, problematizations, and the respective formations of experiences as symptoms of our present related to work and life in the welfare state. Consequently, it enables a symptomatological diagnosis of the present by way of a problem and experience analysis. Part I establishes the theoretical and methodological framework, grounded in Foucault’s work, and highlights the singularity of the method employed in this thesis. Part II maps the symptoms through the problematization and experience analysis of Ærø Manifestet and Arbejdets Land. These symptoms are then regrouped in Part III, where Foucault’s theoretical apparatus focused on truth, power, and subjectivity serves as a hinge to reorganize the identified symptoms, thereby presenting a diagnosis of the current state of work and life within the Danish welfare state that we did not know before. The thesis concludes that as emerging subjectivities weaken the welfare state’s control over its population, the moral subject becomes the central battleground of politics. Ultimately, the welfare state’s legitimacy is at risk as its biopolitical mechanisms lose their efficacy in governing a population increasingly immune to the moral imperatives of work. The primary conclusion, therefore, reveals a deep epistemic rift in the conditions for being a moral subject. This diagnosis raises a critical question about the future of welfare governance in the face of emerging forms of subjectivity, whose moral status is no longer exclusively defined by their role in the labor market.