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December 10, 2010
Foucault Studies Number 6, (February 2009) is entitled Neoliberal Governmentality. It is a response to the recent publication in English of Foucault’s lectures of 1978‐79, The Birth of Biopolitics in which Foucault explores the most current formations of power and to its modes of subjectivity.
In one of the papers--- A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity--- Jason Read discusses Foucault’s lectures of 1978‐79, drawing key insights into the analysis of neoliberalism as a mode of governmentality, as a means by which subjectivity is inscribed and produced as a mode of conduct. He examines the way in which neoliberalism can be viewed as a particular production of subjectivity, as a way in which individuals are constituted as subjects of “human capital. Read says that in order to frame Foucault’s analysis it is useful to begin with how he sees the distinction between liberalism and neoliberalism. For Foucault, this difference has to do with the different ways in which they each focus on economic activity.
Classical liberalism focused on exchange, on what Adam Smith called mankind’s tendency to “barter, truck, and exchange.”
It naturalized the market as a system with its own ra- tionality, its own interest, and its own specific efficiency, arguing ultimately for its superior efficiency as a distributor of goods and services. The market became a space of autonomy that had to be carved out of the state through the unconditional right of private property. What Foucault stresses in his understanding, is the way in which the market becomes more than just a specific institution or practice to the point where it has become the basis for a reinterpretation and thus a critique of state pow- er. Classical liberalism makes exchange the general matrix of society. It establishes a homology: just as relations in the marketplace can be understood as an exchange of certain freedoms for a set of rights and liberties.
Neoliberalism, according to Foucault, extends the process of making economic activity a general matrix of social and political relations, but it takes as its focus not exchange but competition. What the two forms of liberalism, the “classical” and “neo” share, according to Foucault, is a general idea of “homo economicus,” that is, the way in which they place a particular “anthropology” of man as an economic subject at the basis of politics.
Foucault takes the neo-liberal ideal to be a new regime of truth, and a new way in which people are made subjects: homo economicus is fundamentally different subject, structured by different motivations and governed by different principles. Neoliberalism constitutes a new mode of “governmentality,” a manner, or a mentali- ty, in which people are governed and govern themselves
What changes is the emphasis from an anthropology of exchange to one of competition. The shift from exchange to competition has profound effects: while exchange was considered to be natural, competition is understood by the neo-liberals of the twentieth century to be an artificial relation that must be protected against the tendency for markets to form monopolies and interventions by the state. Competition necessitates a constant intervention on the part of the state, not on the market, but on the conditions of the market.
This shift in “anthropology” from “homo economicus” as an exchanging creature to a competitive creature, or rather as a creature whose tendency to compete must be fostered, entails a general shift in the way in which human beings make themselves and are made subjects.
First, neoliberalism entails a massive expansion of the field and scope of economics.... Everything for which human beings attempt to realize their ends, from marriage, to crime, to expenditures on children, can be understood “economically” according to a particular calculation of cost for benefit. Secondly, this entails a mas- sive redefinition of “labor” and the “worker.” The worker has become “human capital”. Salary or wages become the revenue that is earned on an initial investment, an investment in one’s skills or abilities. Any activity that increases the capacity to earn income, to achieve satisfaction, even migration, the crossing of borders from one country to another, is an investment in human capital.
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