The neoliberal/neurotic citizen and security as discourse

Abstract

Through the combination of discourse analysis and governmentality and an appeal to contemporary understandings of citizenship, this article examines the deeper processes of subjective replication and of discursive incitement that enable the extension, intensification and normalisation of security. It looks at how elites, affective structures and governmental standards combine to define the parameters of security and citizenship. By insisting on the contingent nature of both neoliberal rationality and neurosis, the article also points to the spaces of resistance that open up in the enactments of citizenship and security.

Keywords:

• neoliberal governmentality
• neurotic citizenship
• sovereign power
• risk
• genealogy
• security
• resistance
• Foucault

Notes

1. Foucault’s conception of power is notoriously broad and complex. He distinguishes between sovereign power, which he views as prohibitive, juridico-legal and homogeneous (Foucault 1976, 83–85) and ‘productive’ power, which ‘traverses and produces things, induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse’ (1980, 119) and supposes a degree of flux and resistance (1976, 94–95).

2. A ‘disposition’ is here understood as a socially constructed behavioural standard. As an example, a ‘rational’ disposition denotes that a historically specific view of rationality has been partly interiorised and performed by an individual subject.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Philippe Fournier

Dr Philippe Fournier is a postdoctoral fellow at the Canada Research Chair on Globalisation, Democracy and Citizenship (Chaire de recherche du Canada en Mondialisation, Démocratie et Citoyenneté (MDC)), at the University of Quebec at Montreal’s sociology department and teaches political thought and international politics at the University of Montréal. He has published research on Foucault and International Relations Theory (Bridges: conversations in global politics), governmentality in the contemporary United States (Foucault Studies) and Violence and Responsibility (forthcoming at les Presses Universitaires du Québec). He is currently working on the War and Development nexus in contemporary US foreign policy. His other research interests include critical security studies, cultural theory, political economy and US political history.