In this post I want to return to considering Thomas Lemke's paper, 'Foucault, Governmentality and Critique', which I had previously considered here and here.
In those two posts I had briefly shown how Foucault makes a critical contribution to our understanding of neo-liberalism by moving beyond the standard knowledge and power dualism of political philosophy and the duality of state and economy. In this post I want to cosider how Foucault makes a critical contribution to our understanding of neo-liberalism by moving beyond the duality of (free?) subject and power (as domination?) This is the dualism of freedom and constraint so common in a liberalism premised on negative liberty.
Governmentality refers to a continuum from techniques of government to technologies of self-regulation. This enables a more complex account of the way neo-liberalism works as a mode of governance, with its strategies of making individuals and families responsible for social risks such as retirement, illness, unemployment, and poverty.This shaping of responsibility as care of self leads to a moral subject who is able to rationally assess the costs and benefts of a particular course action in relation to others.
A particular example that Lemke metions (pp. 12-13) the self-esteem movement as a way of governing ourselves. Another example would be citizenship where ordinary people have a productive involvement in public affairs.
However in place of the republican government of the people and by the people, political governance is government for the people with the primary responsibility being to provide services. From a nation of free citizens, we have become a nation of individualists and consumers for whom liberty means the right to be left alone and the right to choose among brands of toothpaste. The examples of citizens engaged in serious public work is declining.