Foucault saw homo oeconomicus as enabling, not resisting, governmental reason.

Evidence

Foucault introduces the problem this way: “Is homo oeconomicus an atom of freedom in the face of all the conditions, undertakings, legislation and prohibitions of a possible government, or was he not already a certain type of subject who precisely enabled an art of government to be determined according to the principle of economy, both in the sense of political economy and in the sense of the restriction, self-limitation and fragility of government? Obviously the way in which I have formulated this question gives the answer straightaway … homo oeconomicus as the partner, the vis-à-vis, and the basic element of the new governmental reason formulated in the eighteenth century.” — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 491

Categorization

• DEFINE: Key definition of Brown’s homo oeconomicus-as-political-rationality thesis: the economic subject is the instrument of government, not its limit.
• XREF: connects to: Homo economicus was always the basis of a new governmental reason — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1412; Homo economicus is a grid of intelligibility, not a full anthropology, enabling governability — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1317; Correcting homo oeconomicus’s falsity leaves the governance question untouched — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 204

Broader Connections

• Homo economicus is a grid of intelligibility, not a full anthropology, enabling governability #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1317
• Correcting homo oeconomicus’s falsity leaves the governance question untouched #expands (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 204