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February 10, 2006
A key characteristic of neo-liberal mode of governence is the consistent expansion of the economic form to apply to the social sphere, and the elision of any difference between the economy and the social. In the process neo-liberals attempt to re-define the social sphere as a form of the economic domain. Consequently, the economy is no longer one social domain among others, with its own intrinsic rationality, laws and instruments. Instead, the area covered by the economy embraces the entirety of human action in society, to the extent that this conduct can be characterized by the allocation of scarce resources for competing goals.
Thomas Lemke says that Foucualt's concept of governmentality has two advantages in theoretical terms for an analysis of the neo-liberalism that we now live within. First:
"... the dividing line the liberals draw between the public and private spheres, that is the distinction between the domain of the state and that of society, itself becomes an object of study. In other words, with reference to the issues of government these differentiations are no longer treated as the basis and the limit of governmental practice, but as its instrument and effect."
And secondly,
"the liberal polarity of subjectivity and power ceases to be plausible. From the perspective of governmentality, government refers to a continuum, which extends from political government right through to forms of self-regulation, namely 'technologies of the self ' as Foucault calls them."
These are important shifts in the way we look at neo-liberalism as they make a break from seeing neo-liberalism as an ideology.
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