Foucault, Biopolitics, and Governmentality

JOHANNA OKSALA
game for self-interested individuals. Foucault argues that the principle
behind the neoliberal understanding of the political community is an inverted
social contract: all those who want the social contract and virtually or
actually subscribe to it form part of society until such a time as they cut
themselves off from it. In the neoliberal conception of society as an economic
game there is no one who originally insisted on being part of it, and
consequently it is up to society and the rules of the game imposed by the
state to ensure that no one is excluded from it (BB, 202).
As I argued in the previous section, contesting neoliberal hegemony
politically is difficult because it means contesting economic truths. As the
example of neoliberal social policy shows, it appears to be equally difficult
even if we attempt to move the debate into the realm of values. Contesting
neoliberal hegemony has come to mean contesting the undisputed value of
economic growth. The goal of good governance in modern biopolitical
societies is the maximal material wellbeing of the population. Achieving
this biopolitical objective in the neoliberal framework unfortunately implies
the inevitable widening of the income gap. Questions of social justice have
mutated into economic facts while the undisputed biopolitical ends have
remained the same. 18
The subject
Several commentators have noted how neoliberal governmentality can be
viewed as a particular production of subjectivity: it produces an economic
subject structured by different tendencies, preferences and motivations
compared to the political or legal citizen of a disciplinary society or a society
of sovereignty. 19 The political subject is understood as an atomic individual
whose natural self-interest and tendency to compete must be fostered and
enhanced. He or she is a fundamentally self-interested and rational being
who will navigate the social realm by constantly making rational choices
18 As William Connolly has argued, the principles of capitalist economy conflict with the
principles of equality that underlie the welfare state; see Connolly, “The Dilemma of
Legitimacy,” in W. Connolly (ed.), Legitimacy and the State (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984),
227-31. The welfare state needs a growing economy to support its redistributive programs,
but the structure of the economy is such that growth can only be achieved by
policies that are inconsistent with the principles of justice that underlie those welfare
programs.
19 See e.g. Trent Hamann, “Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics,” Foucault
Studies, No. 6 (2009): 37-59, and Jason Read, “A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism
and the Production of Subjectivity,” Foucault Studies, No. 6 (2009): 25-36.
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