Foucault’s governmentality concept may itself be a cog in the neoliberal regime of truth

Evidence

One example of an author “more Foucauldian than Foucault” would be Bernard Harcourt (“Radical Thought from Marx, Nietzsche and Freud through Foucault, to the Present”), who argues that the idea of a small limited government hemmed in vis-à-vis the market is itself a spurious construct, “‘false,’ but not because its opposite is ‘true’” (ibid., p. 15). In this reading, Foucault himself was a cog in the neoliberal regime of truth, promulgating the notion that “government” was in fact being limited by neoliberal interventions, when in fact it was expanding in both size and power. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1951

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: Harcourt’s counter-reading that Foucault’s framing of ‘limited government’ legitimized an expanding neoliberal state could open a deeper critique among Foucauldian leftists.
• XREF: Connects to the thought-collective thread of this whole book: intellectuals as unwitting transmission belts for neoliberal doctrine. — connects to: Foucault’s prescience about everyday neoliberalism came from adopting neoliberal doctrine — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 278; Neoliberalism sustains itself through double-truth pretenses of spontaneous revolt masking top-down organization — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 210; Neoliberalism’s plasticity prevents treating its current Euro-Atlantic form as essential truth — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 30 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Foucault’s prescience about everyday neoliberalism came from adopting neoliberal doctrine #responds-to (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 278
• Neoliberalism’s plasticity prevents treating its current Euro-Atlantic form as essential truth #qualifies (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 30
• Neoliberalism’s deliberate epistemic inconsistencies enabled its long-term success #qualifies (0.72)
• Neoliberalism sustains itself through double-truth pretenses of spontaneous revolt masking top-down organization #expands (0.70) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 210
• Neoliberalism was only emergent in Foucault’s time, not yet hegemonic #qualifies (0.70) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 90