Neoliberalism governs as a normative form of reason, not ideology or material force.

Evidence

Foucault’s idea, underdeveloped in theory, although extensively explored in his genealogies and lectures, is that political actions, regimes, violence, and everyday practices ought neither to be understood as simply emanating from the intentions of rulers or participants nor, on the other hand, as driven by either material conditions or ideology. Rather, he uses the term “political rationality” to identify the governing form of normative reason that, as Mitchell Dean formulates it, is both “anterior to political action and a condition of it.” … Moreover, power always brings into being the subjects and orders that it may be seen only to organize or to rule. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 219

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines political rationality as a governing normative reason anterior to action.
• XREF: Links to Foucault’s regime of truth concept and Mitchell Dean’s governmentality literature. — connects to: Neoliberalism was both a class-power project and a coherent ideology. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 478; Neoliberalism is fundamentally an epistemological project, not merely a political or economic one — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 900; Neoliberalism is a governing rationality, not just economic policy or ideology. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 14 (+4 more)