The Authoritarian Downside Of A New Strategy.Foucault, Marcuse, And The Neoliberal Transformation

Abstract

In light of the recent debates about the authoritarian turn of neoliberalism, this article focuses on how Foucault and Marcuse critically reckoned with the emergence of a new political rationality in the wake of the crisis of governmentality that occurred in
the early 1970s. Both thinkers pointed to the problematic relationship between liberal freedom and security. While Foucault tended to describe neoliberalism as an indirect art of government and did not foreground its conservative and anti-egalitarian aspects, Marcuse’s reflections help to illuminate how the successful emergence of neoliberal strategies in response to the contestation of the postwar Keynesian and social democratic framework was linked to the mobilization of a conservative and authoritariansensibility that tends to re-emerge when the functioning of the governmental management of society is challenged.

Keywords

critical theory

governmentality

neoliberalism

capitalism

crisis

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