Foucault and the (neo)liberal rationality

Foucault e a racionalidade (neo)liberal

Nildo Avelino (1)

1 CMW - Centre Max Weber

The article discusses the debate about Michel Foucault’s reflection on liberalism and neoliberalism. It presents critically some recent works in France and the USA that has concluded about the existence of affinities, especially theoretical, between Foucault and neoliberalism, pointing out its methodological fragilities. It then seeks to evidence the genealogical specificity that characterizes the Foucaultian analysis in relation at approaches concerned with a kind of ideological denunciation or ideal valuation of liberalism. It particularly retakes the studies of governmentality from which Foucault describes a historical account of liberalism and neoliberalism in terms of governmental rationality. It presents a synthetic figure of the liberal economy of power in the Foucauldian analysis, in which there is a superposition of three historically localizable rationalities: state reason, pastoral power, biopower. The article ends with a reading of the differences between economic liberalism and neoliberalism and the implications of each of them in the exercise of political power.

Mots clés: liberalism; neoliberalism; governmentality; rationality; critique.

Domaines: Science politique

Nildo Avelino. Foucault and the (neo)liberal rationality. Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política, 2016, ⟨10.1590/0103-335220162107⟩. ⟨halshs-01430029⟩