Governmentality, subjectivity, and the neoliberal form of life

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the appropriate answer to the question of the form contemporary neoliberalism gives our lives rests on Michel Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as a particular art of governing human beings. I claim that Foucault’s definition consists in three components: neoliberalism as a set of technologies structuring the ‘milieu’ of individuals in order to obtain specific effects from their behavior; neoliberalism as a governmental rationality transforming individual freedom into the very instrument through which individuals are directed; and neoliberalism as a set of political strategies that constitute a specific, and eminently governable, form of subjectivity. I conclude by emphasising the importance that Foucault’s work on neoliberalism as well as the ancient ‘ethics of the care of the self’ still holds for us today.

Keywords:

• Critique
• Foucault
• governmentality
• neoliberalism
• subjectivity

Acknowledgments

A version of this paper was given at the international workshop ‘The form capitalism gives to our lives’ at the Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin, on September 15th–16th, 2016, and at the international conference ‘Foucault: Ética e política’ at the Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilhã, on March 2nd–3rd, 2017. I am indebted to Alyson Cole, Estelle Ferrarese, Katia Genel, Rahel Jaeggi, Maria Muhle, and the two anonymous reviewers from the Journal for Cultural Research for their generous and fruitful comments. I am particularly grateful to Sabina Vaccarino Bremner for her penetrating remarks and invaluable help.

Notes

1. By ‘ethics,’ I mean ‘the forms of elaboration … that one performs on oneself, not only in order to bring one’s conduct into compliance with a given rule, but to attempt to transform oneself into the ethical subject of one’s behavior’ (Foucault, 1985, p. 27). And since one’s (everyday) life is the site in which the way one is governed by others is tied to the way she conducts herself (Foucault, 2015c, pp. 25, 26), the processes of subject-constitution and the form(s) taken by one’s life are strictly correlative. On this point, see Lorenzini, 2015, pp. 10, 11, 88.

2. ‘[The milieu] is what is needed to account for action at a distance of one body on another. It is therefore the medium of an action and the element in which it circulates. … The milieu is a certain number of combined, overall effects bearing on all who live in it. It is an element in which a circular link is produced between effects and causes, since an effect from one point of view will be a cause from another. … Finally, the milieu appears as a field of intervention in which, instead of affecting individuals as a set of legal subjects capable of voluntary actions – which would be the case of sovereignty – and instead of affecting them as a multiplicity of organisms, of bodies capable of performances, and of required performances – as in discipline – one tries to affect, precisely, a population’ (Foucault, 2007, pp. 20, 21).

3. But this is also true, at least in part, for more ancient forms of ‘pastoral’ governmentality. See Lorenzini, 2016, pp. 15–17.

4. On this point, see also Cukier, 2017, who rightly denounces the exploitation of cooperation under neoliberalism, but who, relying on the concept of alienation, downplays the relevance of the processes of fabrication of a neoliberal form of subjectivity. He therefore underestimates the ‘productive’ side of neoliberal governmental mechanisms that Foucault’s analyses help us to perceive.