From Respectability to Surveillance: Morality, Power, and the Modern State

George Mosse showed that nations do not merely govern territory — they govern meaning. He revealed how sexuality, respectability, and morality were transformed into political instruments, shaping not only law but identity. Yet Mosse was not alone in recognizing that the modern state exerts power through culture, emotion, and regulation of private life. His work finds powerful theoretical counterparts in Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, and George Orwell, each of whom examined how authority operates through normalization, ideology, and psychological control.

Together, these thinkers trace a consistent historical movement: from external domination toward internal regulation; from law to identity; from obedience to belief.

Discipline and Normalization: Mosse and Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault theorized what Mosse historically demonstrated. Where Mosse traced how bourgeois respectability shaped national culture, Foucault explained the machinery behind that process.

In The History of Sexuality, Volume I, Foucault rejected the idea that sexual repression was the primary story of modernity. Instead, he argued that sexuality was produced through discourse, classification, and surveillance:

“Power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.”

This insight mirrors Mosse’s observation that “normality” was politically invented, not naturally discovered. For both, sexuality becomes a site of political meaning. Where Mosse focused on law, aesthetics, and nationalism, Foucault conceptualized this process as biopolitics — power exercised over life itself.

Foucault’s concept of discipline clarifies Mosse’s description of respectability. Respectability, in Foucault’s terms, is not moral guidance but internalized governance. Individuals police themselves according to invisible standards. The repressive state no longer needs chains — it installs conscience.

Both thinkers describe a shift from punishment to normalization:

• Not “Do this or suffer,”

• But “Be this or be excluded.”

Totalitarian Ideology and Mass Psychology: Mosse and Hannah Arendt

If Mosse studied nationalism’s emotional foundations, Hannah Arendt studied its darkest political consequences. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt examined how ideology reshapes reality itself under total rule.

Arendt describes totalitarian regimes not as dictatorships but as systems of total explanation:

“Ideology is the logic of an idea… an idea that pretends to explain everything.”

This relates directly to Mosse’s claim that nationalism functioned as a “secular religion.” In both accounts, the nation becomes sacred. Identity becomes destiny. Loyalty becomes moral virtue.

Arendt pushed this further: when ideology supplants reality, morality collapses. Individuals no longer judge actions — they obey narratives.

Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil complements Mosse’s critique of respectability. People do not commit atrocities because they are monstrous. They commit them because the moral world has been bureaucratized.

Where Mosse traced how sexuality was moralized, Arendt examined how morality itself was erased.

Language, Fear, and Obedience: Mosse and George Orwell

If Mosse examined nationalism’s rituals and morality, Orwell exposed its language.

In 1984, Orwell depicted totalitarianism as psychological annihilation. It is not land or labor that the state seeks to conquer — it is thought.

Orwell’s most famous device, Newspeak, aligns directly with Mosse’s cultural argument. By eliminating certain words, the regime eliminates certain thoughts. By controlling language, it controls identity.

Orwell writes:

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

But before the boot comes language:

• Reversed moral meanings (“Freedom is slavery”),

• Emotional manipulation,

• Enforced conformity not only of action but of belief.

Mosse’s respectable citizen becomes Orwell’s loyal subject.
Orwell dramatizes what Mosse historicizes.

Shared Insight: Power No Longer Commands — It Shapes

Across these works, we see a single evolution:

Old power said: Obey or suffer.
Modern power says: Become.

Power now works through:

• Identity

• Sexuality

• Speech

• Emotion

• Normality

• Fear

• Belonging

This is not simply authoritarianism — it is psychological governance.

Mosse shows us how morality became political.
Foucault shows how discipline became invisible.
Arendt reveals how ideology became reality.
Orwell warns how truth itself disappears.

Conclusion: When Identity Becomes Property of the State

What unites all four thinkers is a single warning:

When politics claims the soul, tyranny no longer needs chains.

Once morality becomes ideological,
Once identity becomes national property,
Once language becomes political currency,
Once respectability becomes qualification for humanity —

— freedom becomes theatrical.

The nation becomes a performance.
Citizenship becomes costume.
Individuality becomes error.

Mosse teaches that classification precedes persecution.
Foucault teaches that normalization precedes obedience.
Arendt teaches that ideology precedes atrocity.
Orwell teaches that language precedes submission.

Together they teach what history verifies:
Power does not steal liberty.
It teaches people not to want it.

 

Reference List

Mosse, George L. Mosse. Nationalism and Sexuality. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

Mosse, George L. The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany. New York: Howard Fertig, 1975.

Foucault, Michel Foucault. The History of Sexuality, Volume I. New York: Pantheon, 1978.

Arendt, Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Orwell, George Orwell. 1984. London: Secker & Warburg, 1949.