October 23, 2005
I've just discovered that David MacNight has a weblog entitled Beyond Left and Right that makes the Oz blosphere a more interesting place, as David is concerned with political ideas. The more voices discussing political ideas in Australia the better.
He understands that most sustained political activity is based on political ideas and a deeper philosophical vision. He even argues that sustained political activity can't be carried on successfully without a such a philosophical basis.
Quite right. That knee jerk decayed positivism, which continues to hang on in political life like a bad smell, has found another critic. Consequently, David understands neo-liberalism in terms of a set of philosophical ideas and values, not just as a different policies or a set of slogans.
Though it is important to highlight that neo-liberalism is a set of philosophical ideas and values, it is more than that. Neo-liberalism is also a capitalist governmental rationality. It is also important this political rationality to understand neo-liberalism as a mode or form of governance.
As Ari Rizvi suggests, oppositional struggles can thus be seen as not just struggles against the capitalist state--as understood by Marxists--- but as struggles against the rationality upon which the hegemony of the capitalist state rests.
This emphasis on political rationality reflects a shift in Foucault's understanding of subjectivity from a strictly disciplinary model to a model made up of normalization, governmentality and the care of the self.
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