Political economy founded itself on the impossibility of an economic sovereign

Evidence

I think this is an important moment when political economy is able to present itself as a critique of governmental reason. I am using “critique” here in the specific, philosophical sense of the term. Kant too, alittle later moreover, had to tell man that he cannot know the totality of the world. Well, some decades.earlier, political economy had told the sovereign: Not even you can know the totality of the economic process. There is no sovereign in economics. There is no economic sovereign. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1456

Categorization

• DEFINE: Foucault redefines ‘critique’ in the specific Kantian sense and grounds it in the sovereign’s incapacity to know the economic totality.
• XREF: connects to: Foucault saw economics as a discipline that forbids any sovereign viewpoint — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1943; The economy is a game whose outcome no one knows — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 931; The economic world must remain opaque even to the sovereign — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1447 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Classical political economy presumed political sovereignty over economic activity. #contradicts (0.90) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 186
• The invisible hand doctrine functions to disqualify the political sovereign #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1457
• State power derives from sovereign capabilities, not merely economic wealth #contradicts (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 181