Neoliberal domination works by making subjects act on themselves and call it freedom

Evidence

Under neoliberalism, the technology of power takes on a subtle form. It does not lay hold of individuals directly. Instead, it ensures that individuals act on themselves so that power relations are interiorized – and then interpreted as freedom. Self-optimization and submission, freedom and exploitation, fall into one. Such engineering of freedom and exploitation, which occurs in order to effect self-exploitation, is what escaped Foucault. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 69

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A paradigm-level claim: power’s most efficient form is not coercion but engineering subjects who experience their own subjection as freedom — dense, widely applicable, resists one-sentence summary.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘liberty is a technology of control’ theme in Foucault scholarship and to contemporary discourse on autonomy, hustle culture, and wellness as discipline. — connects to: Affluence and liberty serve as the guise through which domination absorbs all opposition — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 148; Freedom of choice can itself serve domination when options are controlled. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 121; Capitalist freedom of choice was really freedom to lose — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 100 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal power works by interiorizing relations that subjects read as freedom #corroborates (0.95)
• The system’s celebrated freedoms function as instruments of domination #corroborates (0.90) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 45
• Neoliberal freedom can be a vehicle for governance and domination #expands (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 153
• Neoliberal power works so invisibly that the subject believes it is free #expands (0.85) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 44
• Neoliberalism works best when subjects voluntarily adopt market-logic selves #corroborates (0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 21
• Neoliberal ‘freedom’ is internally redefined to mean market autonomy, not political liberty #qualifies (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 166
• Neoliberalism’s social theory is fundamentally epistemological, recoding freedom as instrumental to independent orders #expands (0.75)
• Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline #qualifies (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 297
• Neoliberalism is activated from below by social actors, not merely imposed from above #expands (0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 530