The French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926~1984, photo) is...
(abridged)
Recently published as the fifth translated volume, <The Birth of Biopolitics>, together with <Security, Territory, Population> released last year, is counted among the most closely watched books today. Centering on the perspective of 'governmentality,' it traces the genealogy of liberalism and neoliberalism across the 17th to 20th centuries, and for that reason — in this moment when people speak of 'the end of neoliberalism' — it is received as a particularly 'contemporary text.'
The distinctiveness of Foucault's thought comes out of the concept of 'governmentality.' Governmentality can be described as 'a certain kind of rationality that guides human conduct,' and Foucault mainly paid attention to the modes of government revealed by the state and state administration in the modern period. Especially, the theme he focused his research on was the emergence of a new governmental rationality that can be called 'liberalism.' The earlier form of government, as seen in the relationship between sovereign and subject, drew its source from external coercion. But the new government that emerged after the 16th century, instead of intervening directly in things or human beings, drew its source from an internal rationality that limits itself in order to govern appropriately. The mechanism that continually produces and organizes freedom and appropriately adjusts the interests that take place within it — this is what emerged as 'liberal governmentality.'
What stands out most in <The Birth of Biopolitics> is its examination of how this liberal governmentality, once it emerged, reinvented itself as neoliberalism. Liberal governmentality, after passing through the 18th and 19th centuries, faces a crisis through controversy and skepticism about how the mechanism made to guarantee freedom instead ended up intervening in freedom. Foucault saw 'ordoliberalism' of 1930s~50s Germany and the 'anarcho-liberalism' of the Chicago School in the U.S. during the 1950s~70s as "new programmings" for this crisis of liberal governmentality, and examined them intensively.
German ordoliberals like Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Röpke tried to escape the crisis of liberalism by placing the legitimacy of political sovereignty itself on the economy and economic growth. Unlike classical liberalism, they argued that the essence of the market is not equivalent 'exchange' but 'competition,' which produces inequality — and that the heart of government is maintaining 'order' by building a competitive mechanism across every domain of society. This approach, which reorganized the whole of society into a field for competition, proposed a new governmentality that linked the exercise of political power to the principles of the market economy, and is said to have become the root of Germany's 'social market economy.'
The American Chicago School's anarcho-liberal position belongs to an even more radical market-based stance than German ordoliberalism. In his analysis of the 'human capital theory' advocated by people like Theodore Schultz, Foucault pointed to the logic by which they pulled in domains previously not recognized as economic — such as family, birth rates, or criminal policy — and tried to extend 'the rationality of the market' across the whole of life.
German ordoliberalism and American neoliberalism differ in many ways in content, but they share the move of replacing 'the social' with 'the economic' and reconstructing liberal governmentality in the direction of letting market principles penetrate every domain. Under this newly dressed-up neoliberal governmentality, human beings are said to live as 'homo economicus' (economic man), each becoming an entrepreneur of oneself. Foucault's cool analysis opens up the recognition that overcoming neoliberalism today cannot be achieved merely by 'correcting' institutions and policies.
Reporter Choi Won-hyung circle@hani.co.kr
Related Books
Publication of the fifth translated volume of Foucault's lectures
Liberalism rooted in internal rationality
In the 18th~19th centuries, paradoxically turned into a mechanism of suppression
Neoliberalism mass-produces 'economic man'
by Michel Foucault,
translated by Sim Se-gwang, Jeon Hye-ri, Jo Seong-eun
/ Nanjang · 29,000 won
This may seem out of the blue..
but I am clipping it because I feel it is something not to be missed in app store and platform strategy.
These days in IT, platform-related issues are rising.
The Apple App Store plays the role of the department store in the fashion or distribution market.
But no one recognizes the Apple App Store as a department store — most see it as a form of monopoly.
(Still writing..)
