Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics

Author: Trent H. Hamann
Year: 2009 (Foucault Studies 6)
Source type: article
Raw file: raw/articles/hamann-2009.md

Summary

Hamann applies Foucault's analysis of neoliberal governance (The Birth of Biopolitics, 1978–79) to understand recent transformations in US individual and social life. The "central aim of neoliberal governmentality ('the conduct of conduct') is the strategic creation of social conditions that encourage and necessitate the production of Homo economicus" — a subject "constituted as a free and autonomous 'atom' of self-interest," morally responsible for navigating the social realm through market-based rational choice "to the exclusion of all other ethical values and social interests." Against this, he argues for "new forms of critique and ethical subjection that constitute resistance."

Key Claims

• Neoliberalism as everyday experience: traditional distinctions between public/private and personal/political have blurred; formerly private life (home) is exposed to production/consumption and surveillance, and the public realm is privatized (BIDs, for-profit schools/prisons, "ownership," voluntary charity taking over social goods).
• Governmentality and homo economicus: following Foucault, neoliberalism (esp. American/Chicago School) "extend[s] the rationality of the market ... to domains which are not exclusively or not primarily economic." The "economic man" is "not a natural being with predictive behavior, but instead a form of subjectivity maintained through social mechanisms."
• The worker as entrepreneur of self / everyday expert: via Becker, labor is reconstructed as human capital (innate + acquired); "workers are no longer recognized as dependent on an employer but ... are fashioned as free and autonomous entrepreneurs fully responsible for their presumably rational self-investment decisions."
• Individualization and invisibility of inequality: "Exploitation, domination, and every other form of social inequality is rendered invisible ... to the extent that each individual's social condition is indicted as nothing other than the effect of his or her own choices and investments" (Wendy Brown: homo economicus is "not a citizen who obeys rules" but "a rational and calculating entrepreneur"); the "strategic programming of individuals' activity."
• Resistance through critique and ethics: recognizing the "effects of subjectification produced at the level of everyday life through the neoliberal 'conduct of conduct'," we must "recognize and invent new forms of critique and ethical subjection that constitute resistance to its specific dangers."

Connections

Concepts: Entrepreneur of Self · Noopolitics · Ideology · Neoliberal Metropolis
Authors: Trent H. Hamann
Debates: Critical vs. Projective
Related source notes: Foucault and the Entrepreneur of Self (Galdas) · Capitalist Realism (Fisher)

Direct Quotes

"The central aim of neoliberal governmentality ('the conduct of conduct') is the strategic creation of social conditions that encourage and necessitate the production of Homo economicus."

"[W]orkers are no longer recognized as dependent on an employer but instead are fashioned as free and autonomous entrepreneurs fully responsible for their presumably rational self-investment decisions."

"Exploitation, domination, and every other form of social inequality is rendered invisible as social phenomena to the extent that each individual's social condition is indicted as nothing other than the effect of his or her own choices and investments."

"[W]e [must] recognize and invent new forms of critique and ethical subjection that constitute resistance to its specific dangers."

Open Questions

• Does Foucault's "ethics" (as critique/subjection) offer a way out of neoliberal subjectification, or does it remain too individual/aesthetic to contest the built-environment embodiment of homo economicus?