Foucault treated the market as an unexamined oracle, no differently than Hayek did

Evidence

One way to interpret this is to say that the cast of historical figures in capitalist societies operated within a regime of truth that elevated the construct identified as “the economy” to pride of place in their exercise of power; and further, the appeal to self-limitation was a means to their expansion of power; but that does not correspond to what appears in the lectures. Rather, Foucault seeks to interrogate government as the assemblage of techniques, beliefs, practices, and excuses that try to maintain order; but he leaves “the economy” as the independent Representative of the Real, a placeholder without interrogation or even any description. The market as portrayed by Foucault in his late lectures on neoliberalism is the sole legitimate site for the production of indubitable knowledge of the whole; in other words, an absent deity rendered in a manner no different from Hayek or Stigler or Friedman or Buchanan. The “market” (always referenced as a monolithic entity) provides the boundary condition for governmentality, because it alone knows things we can never know. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 280

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s advanced understanding of the neoliberal thought collective; Foucault’s late-market turn is a well-known point of scholarly tension with his earlier critique of power/knowledge.