Neoliberalism, governmentality, and ethics

Foucault Studies

Volumn , Issue 6, 2009, Pages 37-59

  Hamann, Trent H ^a  

^a ST JOHN'S UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Biopolitics; Critique; Ethics; Foucault; Genealogy; Governmentality; Homo economicus; Neoliberalism

Indexed keywords

EID: 77950534094     PISSN: None     EISSN: 18325203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.22439/fs.v0i0.2471     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979, translated by Graham Burchell, edited by Arnold I. Davidson (New York: Palgrave Macmil-lan, 2008). Henceforth, BB, with page numbers given in the text.
2. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose have observed that for Foucault libe- ralism (and, by extension, neoliberalism) indicate something like an ethos of government rather than a specific historical moment or single doctrine. See their introduction to Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-liberalism and Rationalities of Government, edited by Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 8.
3. Foucault defines "governmentality" as an apparatus of administrative power "that has the population as its target, political economy as its major form of knowledge, and appa-ratuses of security as its essential technical instrument." See Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-1978, translated by Graham Burchell, edited by Arnold I. Davidson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 108-9. Henceforth, STP, with page numbers given in the text.
4. Throughout this paper I will follow the distinction made by Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg between 1) "subjectification" (assujettissement) or the ways that others are go-verned and objectified into subjects through processes of power/knowledge (including but not limited to subjugation and subjection since a subject can have autonomy and power relations can be resisted and reversed), and 2) "subjectivation" (subjectivation) or the ways that individuals govern and fashion themselves into subjects on the basis of what they take to be the truth. Subjectivation can take either the form of self-objectification in accord with processes of subjectification or it can take the form of a subjectivation of a true discourse produced through practices of freedom in resistance to prevailing appara-tuses of power/knowledge. See Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, "The Final Foucault: Government of Others and Government of Oneself" (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Pub-lishing, forthcoming 2008). Henceforth, FF.
5. Karl Marx, "Estranged Labor," in The Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, edited by Dirk J. Struik (New York: International Publishers, 1964), 110.
6. See Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (New York: Verso, 2006).
7. Michel Foucault, "About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth," Political Theory, 21, 2 (May 1993), 203-4.
8. Pierre Bourdieu, "The Essence of Neoliberalism," translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro, Le Monde diplomatique (December 1998), http://mondediplo.com/ 1998/12/08bourdieu (accessed April 30, 2008).
9. See Wendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays On Knowledge and Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). Henceforth, E, with page numbers given in the text.
10. I use the term "morality" here in the formal sense used by Foucault. Generally speaking it is the code (or codes) that determines which acts are permitted or forbidden and the values attributed to those acts. These codes inform the ethical relationship one has to one's self. See Michel Foucault, "On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress," in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 237-8. Henceforth, OGE, with page numbers given in the text.
11. The full report "State of the World's Cities 2006/7" press release, and other related documents can be accessed in PDF format at the UN-HABITAT webpage: http://hq. unhabi-tat.org/content.asp?cid=3397&catid= 7&typeid=46&sub MenuId=0 (accessed April 30, 2008). I have not found an updated version of this report at the time of this writing.
12. See Phillip Thornton's article, "More are Hungry Despite World Leaders' Pledge," The Independent/UK, October 16, 2006.
13. All statistics, facts, and figures on homelessness are taken from the National Coalition for the Homeless publications website: http:://www. nationalhomeless.org/publications/facts.htm (accessed April 30, 2008).
14. Linda Gibbs, as quoted by Robert Kolker in his January 6, 2003 New York magazine article: "Home for the Holidays."
15. See the February 29, 2008 Washington Post article "New High in U.S. Prison Numbers," http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/story/2008/02/ 28/ST2008022803016.html (accessed April 30, 2008).
16. See the press release entitled: "Hate Crimes and Violence Against Homeless People Increasing," http://www.nationalhomeless.org/hatecrimes/ pressrelease.html (accessed April 30, 2008).
17. In addition to Wendy Brown, cited above, see for example Jeffrey T. Nealon's Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and its Intensifications Since 1984 (Stanford, CA: Stanford Universi-ty Press, 2008)
18. and the work of Nikolas Rose, in particular his Powers of Freedom: Refram-ing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
19. While he does not raise the problem specifically in relation to neoliberalism, Todd May expresses a similar concern about the use of the concept of "globalization" to describe our present. See his article "Foucault Now?" in Foucault Studies, 3 (November 2005).
20. Also see the last chapter, "Are we still who Foucault says we are?" in his book The Philosophy of Foucault (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006), 132-59.
21. Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg locate this problem in much of Anglo-Saxon go- vernmentality theory [FF]. Nancy Fraser has described disciplinary power as a "Fordist mode of social regulation" that is no longer very useful for describing contemporary so-ciety. See her article "From Discipline to Flexibilization? Rereading Foucault in the Sha-dow of Globalization," in Constellations, 10, 2 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 160-71.
22. Jeffrey T. Nealon's Foucault Beyond Foucault offers a characterization of this prevalent but mistaken reading in which "the late Foucaultian turn to the self-creating subject and its artistic agency can only remind us of present-day American military recruiting posters ('Become an Army of One') or the corporate slogan of Microsoft: 'Where would you like to go today?'" (p. 11).
23. See, for example, the transcript of the PBS News Hour report aired January 15, 2007 on the NIFTY programs at a Providence, Rhode Island high school and the Rikers Island jail facility. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/ jan-june07/entrepreneurs-01-15.html (accessed April 30, 2008).
24. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Random House, 1965), 38-64.
25. Michel Foucault, "The Political Technology of Individuals," in Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton (eds.), Technologies of the Self (Amherst, MA: The Univer-sity of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 145-62.
26. Henceforth, PTI, with page numbers given in the text. Foucault explains here that: "The police govern not by the law but by a specific, a permanent, and a positive intervention in the behavior of individuals" (p. 159).
27. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1979), 202-3.
28. Joseph Persky, "The Ethology of Homo Economicus," Journal of Economic Perspectives. 9, 2 (Spring 1995), 221-31. Henceforth, EHE, with page numbers given in the text.
29. John Stuart Mill, "On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of Investigation Proper to It," in Collected Works. vol. 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 120-64.
30. Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981-82, translated by Graham Burchell, edited by Frédéric Gros (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 252. Henceforth, THS, with page numbers given in the text.
31. As Foucault put it: "Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free" (TSP, 221).
32. John Rajchman, "Introduction: Enlightenment Today," in Sylvère Lotringer (ed.) The Poli- tics of Truth (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2007), 14-5.
33. Edward F. McGushin, Foucault's Askesis: An Introduction to the Philosophical Life (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 239.
34. The Political: Readings in Continental Philosophy edited by David Ingram (London: Basil Blackwell, 2002).
35. Michel Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?" in The Politics of Truth, edited by Sylvère Lo- tringer (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 1997), 113. Henceforth, WE, with page numbers given in the text.
36. Timothy O'Leary, Foucault and the Art of Ethics (London: Continuum, 2002), 129.
37. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, "Power and Truth" in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 187