Construir lo humano : mutaciones del poder en la lectura foucaultiana del liberalismo.

Abstract

The lectures given by Foucault at the end of the seventies on German, French and American neoliberalism in his course The Birth of Biopolitics, have been recently read by some interpreters of his work as an ideological alignment with the principles and the model of society that these perspectives present. The aim of this article is to provide, against this kind of readings, some elements that allow us to highlight what we consider is the specific dimension of Foucault’s analysis of liberalism and, specially, of American neoliberalism. We will do this in order to emphasize its importance for a political reading or, according to Foucault, a “politically relevant” one, of what is clearly far from being a mere economic theory. To this end, we will focus mainly on two aspects. First, following the development of the concept of government, we will attempt to explain the shift in Foucault’s notion of life and in the scope of its capture within governmental practices from the perspective of classical liberalism to that of American neoliberalism; second, we will try to provide some elements to think that “political relevance” aforementioned.

Keywords:

Government Life Naturalness Normativity Neoliberalism Truth