‘Power, protest and politics: Foucault and the new panopticons’

NOTE: This work was originally submitted as a dissertation on an Open University Philosophy MA, September 2024. All work is that of Marcus Jervis, unless referenced otherwise.

Michel Foucault (photographer unknown)

Abstract

This dissertation aims to consider neoliberalism as a productive power of the type identified by Foucault, to explore its benefit or detriment to the world, and to assess how opponents of neoliberalism might better combat its more damaging traits. In chapter one, I define and sketch a brief outline of contemporary neoliberalism, attempting a broad contextualisation of its place in the world, in relation to the subjects it creates, the populations it governs, and its functioning as a governmentality. I highlight three key aspects relevant to Foucault’s thought as it relates to neoliberalism and its impacts: firstly, his intellectual position as set out in part one of The History of Sexuality, The Birth of Biopolitics and elsewhere; secondly, an engagement with criticism of Foucault’s intellectual position, and, finally, a wider discussion of neoliberalism, surveillance and oppression, and the dynamics of neoliberal relationships as seen through a Foucauldian lens. In later chapters I explore these topics in turn: chapter two specifically examines criticisms of Foucault’s position, particularly as understood by those on the political left, while in chapter three, my focus turns to neoliberalism, oppression and power dynamics. In chapter four, I move on to consider contrasting perspectives from those who position themselves in opposition to the damaging excesses of neoliberalism, and conclude that in combatting neoliberalism in its most corrupt presentations, there are undoubtedly short and long-term battles to be fought, but also that these struggles to reshape power – be it neoliberal or otherwise - should not distract from the important discourses we must have with ourselves, outside of our relationships to external state or governmental power. In doing this, I stress the necessity of continual self-examination and emphasise the importance of freedom as critique as methods of resistance. Throughout the dissertation, I also discuss subjectification, and the speculation that Foucault would view neoliberalism very differently in 2024 to how he did in the 1970s. It is hoped that this approach serves to highlight the multiple contexts within which neoliberal governmentality operates, and establishes a tentative, indicative framework within which resistance to power can be reimagined individually and collectively.  

 Table of Contents

P. 4.    Chapter 1

Where we are now…and why this is a problem.

P. 9.    Chapter 2: 

From Marx to the marketplace: how Foucault embraced neoliberalism, or did he?

P. 15.  Chapter 3:

Surveillance, Suppression and New Forms of Power.

P. 21.  Chapter 4:

Conclusion: Even As Imperfect Beings.

P. 24.  Bibliography.

 Power, protest and politics: Foucault and the new panopticons.

1: Where we are now…and why this is a problem.

‘Isn’t power simply a form of warlike domination?’ (Foucault, 1986, p. 65)

Even the most cursory glance at the daily news will leave the viewer in little doubt that turmoil grips much of the world and that, for billions of people, life is no more than a daily struggle. There are degrees of struggle: some face a struggle for their very lives, while for others, the struggle is less critical but still serious – a struggle to secure an affordable mortgage or to find a fulfilling job perhaps. To some extent, our view of contemporary struggle will depend on our position in it, but undoubtedly, many of us are in it to some degree. It might be said that we are indeed held in a state of warlike domination by established powers. In the following discussion, I consider whether these established powers not only exist because of neoliberalism, but also to perpetuate it – see, for example, Šumonja (2021, p. 217), who asserts that the ‘strong hand of state’ is the ‘organising force’ of modern neoliberal action. I will explore whether modern governmentalities are themselves so bound by their absolute devotion to neoliberal ideas that they either fail to see the political contradictions at its core, or, if they do see them, they are unwilling or unable to act against them. As such, one question that underpins the discussion to follow is whether the flaws at the heart of neoliberalism will inevitably result in dangerous power-fractures, division and fragmentation. I am interested in Foucault’s view of neoliberalism and the extent to which he embraced it as a philosophical concept within his wider evaluation of power. I will proffer that while he may not have foreseen the negative effects of neoliberalism’s fatal political flaws, far from being a radical departure for Foucault, neoliberalism as theory might be seen as an extension of his thought not entirely incompatible with some of the ideas about biopower and the right to life explored in part one of The History of Sexuality (1990). For Foucault, a cautious endorsement of neoliberalism does not represent an intellectual about-face, but an exploratory line of thought of the type that characterised his career. I will begin, though, with a few general comments about the state of the neoliberal world.

The fact that many people face a struggle to live safe and satisfying lives is not new or revelatory. In 1800, around 80% of the world’s population ‘lived in material conditions that we would refer to as extreme poverty today’ (Roser, 2017). There is a good degree of comfort to be found in the fact that this figure had reduced to under 10% by 2020 (see World Vision, nd), but while absolute poverty – defined by the World Bank as living on less than $2.15 a day - might be diminishing, broader inequality remains pronounced and is a defining feature of our age. Most significantly in terms of the discussion to follow, such inequality has not occurred by accident and is not restricted to what might be thought of as ‘poor’ or ‘developing’ nations. The United States, for example, is the wealthiest nation in the world by Gross Domestic Product (see Silver, 2024) yet based on 2022 figures, almost 38 million Americans (11.5% of the population) were living in poverty (see World Vision, nd). In a country such as the United States, there is no need for this to be the case: the country possesses sufficient wealth to address the issues of material inequality it faces, but instead chooses to act according to the principles and policies of neoliberalism, a system which at best marginalises or ignores the impoverished, or at worst, actively creates greater inequality in pursuit of its aims. As Dewey (2017) summarises:

‘…neoliberalism increases income inequality by rewarding those who are already wealthy, while providing fewer nets for poorer populations to fall back on. A person born into wealth may find it easier to receive a college education, access a wealthier network, and consequently land a higher paying job. In contrast, individuals from low income communities cannot access those same opportunities nor advance their socioeconomic status’ (Dewey, 2017).

Scanlon (2018) identifies a number of key philosophical objections to such inequality, including status, equality of opportunity and political fairness (see Scanlon, 2018, pp. 4 – 6). Most importantly for my purposes in this discussion, however, is the objection that pervasive inequality leads to an uneven distribution of control – and that those who lack control over their own lives will struggle to ever gain parity with those who exercise control over others. As Scanlon puts it,

‘If…a small number of people control almost all of the wealth in a society, this can give them an unacceptable degree of control over where people work, what is available for them to buy, and in general what their lives will be like’ (Scanlon, 2018, p. 5).

In the sense that it aggressively promotes inequality as little more than an inevitable by-product of ‘fair’ and ‘transparent’ market forces functioning without state interference, neoliberalism is an enemy hidden in plain sight, but no less difficult to combat because of its visibility. Indeed, the world is such that purveyors of neoliberalism have, in many cases, convinced its victims that neoliberalism is in fact their saviour, not its oppressor, and that other governmentalities could not possibly function with anything like the same degree of success. Brighi (2016) makes a valid point in identifying the way in which governmental and systemic failure is projected onto individuals who fall into resentment and ressentiment, which is described as ‘…a general and fundamental existential condition in the ‘plastic cage’ of late modern societies (Brighi, 2016, p. 426).

Given neoliberalism’s centring of the individual as a biopolitical economic unit in a broader societal power dynamic, it is unsurprising that it attracted the attention of the later Foucault who dedicated a series of lectures – collected together in The Birth Of Biopolitics - to the topic in 1978–79 (see Foucault, 2004), just as neoliberalism entered the wider consciousness via the emergence of Reaganomics and Thatcherism. I will draw on these lectures, particularly those in the second half of the collection. In my discussion, there are three main themes I wish to explore, all of which overlap and cannot be addressed without reference to the others. I will introduce these three themes shortly, but there is an overarching speculation that ties the three themes together, which is that the course neoliberalism has taken in the four decades since Foucault’s lectures is very different to what he might have expected or hoped for. Far from being a liberating force for the individual, or creating an environment that fosters positive self-actualisation, it has become a domineering, sinister and destructive presence, reliant on surveillance and suppression to succeed – an expression of the very ‘warlike domination’ to which Foucault refers (Foucault, 1986, p. 65). There is a second element that runs throughout this discussion and links the three central themes, which is that of subjectification. I will speak specifically towards subjectification in the concluding chapter, but this should not suggest that it is a topic to be treated in isolation. On the contrary: subjectification is relevant throughout any Foucauldian analysis of power dynamics and is therefore crucial to building a holistic understanding of the power, protest and politics referenced in the title of this discussion.

Neoliberalism and its impacts do not exist in abstract political or economic theory but are a central part of a world in which the manoeuvring of ideas, forces and powers play out in real time and affect real lives. At this early stage, it should be stressed that while neoliberalism is widely – and correctly – thought of as an economic theory in which the freedom of the market is sacrosanct, my definition will be broader. I will consider neoliberalism as a political, social and cultural force, the effects of which reach far beyond pure economics – what Klein (2012) describes as an aggressive ‘sort of social re-engineering of societies in the interests of corporations’ (see YouTube, 2012), or what Han sees as an all-encompassing form of psychopolitical control in which domination is exercised through the use of personal information and data (see Marchetti, 2020). Neoliberalism is not quite a war of all against all, but it is a war in which a tiny cohort of the already exceedingly wealthy and powerful can assert dominion over the majority of the world’s population not only by economic means, but by means of maximising fear, alienation and clandestine subjectification, alongside the administering of more traditional discipline and punishment when necessary. It is a war in which an infinitesimally small group can, thanks to their stranglehold in a few key areas – finance, politics, media and the corporate arena - sow division within a much larger group. Economically, neoliberalism departs little from the classical liberal model of a free market operating with minimal state interference, but other liberal values such as free speech, individual autonomy and civil liberties for all do not serve neoliberalism well and are discouraged, criticised and sanctioned by governmentalities that no longer lead the way for their people, but exist solely to serve the ideology that has overrun both the nation state and its citizens. Foucault himself (2004, p. 148) observes that neoliberalism is about much more than just laissez faire economics, and instead emphasises how enterprise in the wider social body makes ‘…the market, competition and so the enterprise, into what could be called the formative power of society’. Later in his analysis, Foucault makes the point even more forcibly when discussing American liberalism (and, one might reasonably assume, neoliberalism), noting that

‘American liberalism is not…just an economic and political choice formed and formulated by those who govern and within the governmental milieu. Liberalism in America is a whole way of being and thinking’ (Foucault, 2004, p. 218).

It should also be stressed at this point that while Foucault’s genealogy traces neoliberalism to the German ordoliberalism of the 1930s or earlier, my interest lies with the Chicago School-style American neoliberalism that became prevalent in western democracies from the 1970s onwards. Any reference to neoliberalism in my discussion therefore assumes this specific meaning.  

I have said there are three main topics I wish to explore. The first of these is to assess where Foucault stood on the matter of neoliberalism in his work. For instance, when Foucault speaks of a reconceptualised homo ǣconomicus being an entrepreneur of himself, invested in the production of his own achievement and satisfaction, or non-critically references the theories of consumption and human capital devised by Becker – the Chicago School economist described as putting a price on everything (see Harford, 2014) - should this be taken as an endorsement, however tentative, of neoliberal ideas? (see Foucault, 2004, p. 226). Or should we instead look to the body of work to have emerged since Foucault’s death which continues to situate him as an oppositional radical? Allen and Goddard (2014), for example, make the argument that Foucault’s growing dissatisfaction with Marxism during the 1970s should not be taken as a rejection of radicalism but as a means to ‘broaden the scope of political struggle’ (Allen and Goddard, 2014, p. 28). Might it be that understanding Foucault’s thinking requires a compromise between, or an extension of, these two positions, as contended by Oksala who argues that both Marxist theory and Foucauldian thought fall short in terms of understanding how neoliberal governmentalities create and manipulate human subjectivities (see Oksala, 2023, p. 583). Can it be argued that Foucault was enamoured not with neoliberalism and its impacts per se, nor with a stagnating and monolithic left, but instead saw nascent neoliberalism as an opportunity for hitherto oppressed individuals to exert themselves as liberated and self-determining forces. In other words, neoliberalism was a means to the production of individual power. As Lemke (2010, p. 202) notes in discussing the neoliberal view of the welfare state, neoliberalism ‘…encourages individuals to give their lives a specific entrepreneurial form’. Foucault’s sympathetic reading of neoliberalism would have held not insignificant weight at the time of his Paris lectures when neoliberal thought was an emergent force and, in light of comments such as that above by Lemke, it is not difficult to understand why Foucault viewed neoliberalism as a not wholly damaging or negative advent. Some four decades later, the picture is considerably different: neoliberalism has become an authoritarian dogma, negatively impacting all but the tiniest percentage of the world’s population to such a degree that it relies on the psychological, and sometimes physical, violence of autocratic or autocratic-like states for its continued success. A Foucauldian analysis of neoliberalism in 2024 would, I think, be hugely different to one in the late 1970s. As Dean (2014, p. 439) notes when exploring how Foucault’s assessment of the welfare state somewhat foreshadowed the ‘third way’ taken by a centrist British Labour Party in the 1990s, ‘the diagnosis and solutions that might have sounded somewhat fresh in Foucault’s time are now depressingly familiar’.   

The second topic of interest is that of criticism directed at Foucault, mainly from those on the political left, which portrays him as overly sympathetic towards the neoliberal project. In mentioning Foucault’s warm evaluation of Becker, I have already alluded to Foucault’s ‘apology’ for neoliberalism (see Dean, 2014) which I will discuss in due course, but there are other criticisms. Zamora, for instance, addresses Foucault’s position on healthcare spending and comments that it is ‘close to the neoliberal view’ (Zamora, 2015, p. 73), going on to say that Foucault ‘…remained attracted to an alternative to welfare state principles proposed by Milton Friedman in 1962 in his famous book Capitalism and Freedom…’ (Zamora, 2015, p. 76). Behrent makes a further convincing point when he stresses that Foucault’s thought and neoliberalism have ‘a shared suspicion of the state’ (Behrent, 2015, p. 29). If we accept, as I believe we must, that a thread of antistatism runs through both Foucauldian thought and neoliberal ideology, it becomes challenging to defend any position that claims Foucault did not, in terms of its relationship to the state, have at least some degree of attraction to neoliberalism that potentially undermines those on the left (who may share his baseline antistatism) wishing to claim him as their own. I do not believe any of these criticisms to be fatal, even for those seeking a leftist Foucault, but they do require serious consideration.

Thirdly, I will explore whether there is an ultimately self-defeating characteristic ingrained within neoliberalism that breeds opposition toward it, and fosters relationships of violence. By violence I do not refer only to physical violence – although this is certainly applicable on occasion – but to a more insidious, doctrinal and often untraceable psychological violence that oversees ‘…massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services’ (Monbiot, 2016). In exploring the way human relationships play out in neoliberal societies, Harvey (2005) shines a light on what he terms ‘the fundamental political problems’ of neoliberalism, noting its paradoxical nature and the contradictions that exist

‘…between a seductive but alienating possessive individualism on the one hand and the desire for a meaningful collective life on the other. While individuals are supposedly free to choose, they are not supposed to choose to construct strong collective institutions…as opposed to weak voluntary associations’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 69).

The challenge for neoliberalism then - one it has never really met – is how to reconcile its mantras of freedom and individual choice with its dependence on individuals making choices consistent with the aims of neoliberalism. Gane (2008) identifies neoliberalism as inconsistent with autonomy or state non-intervention. To use his word, neoliberalism is a ‘mutation’ of classical liberalism. Gane writes of the neoliberal paradox:

‘…far from bringing less government, neoliberalism will bring a different type of government and inserted at a different site: a new site of truth, a new application of power and a new set of demands on conduct’ (Gane, 2008, p. 358).

For neoliberalism to flourish, individual freedom can only be permitted to continue for as long as said individuals are making choices that further the neoliberal project. When individuals begin to make choices that deviate from neoliberal principles then ‘…the state must resort to persuasion, propaganda or, when necessary, raw force and police power to suppress opposition to neoliberalism’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 70). How individuals and communities might exploit a Foucauldian understanding of power to better resist the autocratic or aggressive characteristics of neoliberal governmentality is something I explore in the second half of this discussion.

For all of the posturing about individualism, economic autonomy and market supremacy, there is a political contradiction at the very core of neoliberalism that leaves it utterly reliant on a strong, interventionist and even authoritarian state. Neoliberalism is merely a new governmentality. A new way of conducting conduct. If ordinary citizens choose not to embrace the ‘freedoms’ offered by neoliberalism, then the freedoms must be imposed, by force if necessary. As democratic states become more authoritarian in their imposition of neoliberal values, dissatisfaction with such authoritarianism increases, in turn prompting further shifts towards authoritarianism and  the ushering in of a circularity of state / subject violence in which neither side can hope for any sort of honourable victory: democracy descends into a struggle for a strange kind of freedom that one side wants to – indeed, must – impose on the other at all costs, but which the other side utterly rejects, and resists in any way it can. It is little surprise that Cambridge University is able to point to ‘an acute crisis of democratic faith’ across ‘Anglo-Saxon’ liberal democracies, where rising inequality, feelings of exclusion and frustrations with political elites result in ever growing polarisation (see Cambridge University, 2020, pp. 18 – 19). A freedom that is imposed, is no freedom at all.

Foucault explored how power shifted from the disciplinary and the sovereign right of death, to the bio-political management of individuals and populations. What he described as ‘normalising society’ came into being as a consequence of a ‘technology of power centred on life’ which relied both on the appraisal and assessment of an individual’s usefulness and utility, and crucially, on said individual internalising the values and norms of the society in which she lived (see Foucault, 1990, p. 143). Contextualised by the emergence of Chicago School economics and a broader rejection of socialist politics, there is merit in this view and the appeal of neoliberalism becomes clear. But neither Foucault, nor the staunchest advocates of neoliberalism have ever convincingly addressed concerns about the political paradox at the heart of neoliberalism: namely, that it is an ideology that cries freedom while relying on oppression. It is to this criticism, and criticism of Foucault, that I now turn.  

2: From Marx to the marketplace: how Foucault embraced neoliberalism, or did he?

‘…Don’t talk to me about Marx anymore! I never want to hear about that man again. For me, Marx is a done deal. It’s over’ (Foucault [1975], quoted in Pavór-Cuéllar, 2022, p. 328).

Despite Foucault’s comment above, there are those who claim him to be a ‘left-wing revolutionary thinker’ (see Kelly, nd). While it is, of course, entirely possible to reject Marxism without embracing neoliberalism, or any other right-leaning political or economic position, my focus in this chapter is on exploring the assertion that embracing neoliberalism is precisely what the later Foucault did do – at least to some degree. Behrent (2016) concedes that viewing Foucault in such a way might be antithetical for his critics and champions alike, but argues that in making inadequate acknowledgement of Foucault’s turn towards neoliberalism, they fail to understand the profound antistatism of both Foucault and neoliberalism itself. The 1970s saw a shift in Foucault’s thought, with the theoretical antistatism of his earlier work giving way to a more normative view of power in which the state ceased to be the main source of authority, or the sole arbiter of political action (see Behrent, 2016, p. 29). From this foundation, Behrent makes two other key observations. Firstly, that in France and elsewhere, the 1970s saw somewhat of an intellectual pushback against radical leftism so, in this sense, Foucault was a product of his time, and it would be an error not to situate him as such. However sympathetic to neoliberalism Foucault might be in his Biopolitics lectures, we should display restraint in jumping to any overly critical conclusions about what his views might or might not have been today.  Secondly, and more importantly, as an inherently anti-statist phenomena, economic liberalism was ‘a liberalism without humanism’ (Behrent, 2016, p. 30). According to Behrent, in contrast to political liberalism, economic liberalism is a force concerned with the limitation of power and, as such, it offered

‘…a compelling terrain upon which (Foucault’s) practical aspiration for freedom might merge with his theoretical conviction that power is constitutive of all human relationships’ (ibid).

In other words, neoliberalism offered Foucault an opportunity to indulge the prospect of a truly liberal actuality, rather than a facsimile or imitation of one reliant on recourse to an overbearing state within which were contained ‘…the seeds of fascism…(and)…inherent violence beneath its social welfare paternalism’ (Foucault, 2004, p. 187). Foucault claims (ibid) that there is an inflationary ‘kinship’ or ‘genetic continuity’ between different branches or incarnations of the state, be they administrative, welfare or totalitarian, and at least entertains the idea that leaps from one to the other are smaller than we might imagine or hope. If we accept the Foucauldian view that the state is not a thing, but a practice of power relations (see O’Farrell, nd), the opportunity to access an autonomy in which the state practices less, and limits its exercise of power is clearly endearing to those of both political left and right, and perhaps too tempting to dismiss. Against this background, it is unsurprising to find Foucault echoing Hayek in calling for liberalism to fabricate its own utopias (see Foucault, 2004, pp. 218 – 219), although we must be careful to fully grasp that in tracing a line from The History of Sexuality to the Paris lectures, ‘utopia’ for Foucault is not a picture-perfect idyll but simply the right to a meaningful life ‘…understood as the basic needs, man’s concrete essence, the realization of his potential, a plenitude of the possible’ (Foucault, 1990, p. 145).  

In 2024, however, for much of the world’s population, there is little to convince them that they are living in any kind of neoliberal utopia, and there is no suggestion that this is likely to change imminently, if at all. The political left – traditionally the societal force that might push back against the excesses of capitalism – has itself been seduced by neoliberalism. Or, as Monbiot and Hutchinson (2024, p. 25) put it rather less charitably, there is no way to ‘disguise the capitulation of the left to neoliberal forces’. It might reasonably be asked why a thinker with the intellectual foresight of Foucault did not adequately acknowledge the possibility, even the likelihood, of neoliberalism morphing into another expression of imperious governmentality with as much of a tendency towards totalitarianism as any other state operating mechanism. The answer to this dilemma might be found, in part, by looking back at part one of The History of Sexuality and exploring what Foucault says about the way in which techniques of power have changed over time, with established power – be it a sovereign or a state – becoming less concerned about exercising its ultimate sanction of death, and instead becoming the ultimate administrator of life. These ideas warrant a detailed exploration.

Foucault highlights how the west has experienced a drastic shift in the workings of power mechanisms since the classical era. He claims that ‘deduction’ – the right of a power to somehow negatively affect a subject or citizen, even to the ultimate sanction of death – is no longer the dominant manifestation of power but

‘…merely one element among others, working to incite, reinforce, control, monitor, optimise and organise the forces under it: a power bent on generating forces, making them grow and ordering them, rather than dedicated to impeding them, making them submit or destroying them’ (Foucault, 1990, p. 136).     

Foucault builds on this by identifying what he calls ‘two poles of development linked together by a whole intermediary cluster of relations’ (Foucault, 1990, p. 139). The first identifies ‘the body as a machine’ and its ‘integration into systems of efficient and economic controls’. This ensures that every individual can be maximised in terms of both their utility and docility in what Foucault terms ‘an anatomo-politics of the human body’ (ibid). The second pole identified by Foucault concerns ‘a bio-politics of the population’ and is ‘focused on the species body’ (ibid). This allows power to monitor and administer life across the society it governs in terms of imperatives such as mortality, health and life expectancy. On Foucault’s view, these two poles are the foundations around which power is constructed and organised. He describes it as a ‘great bipolar technology – anatomic and biological’ that is concerned with

‘individualising and specifying, directed to the performances of the body, with attention to the processes of life – characterised a power whose highest function was perhaps no longer to kill, but to invest life through and through’ (Foucault, 1990, pp. 138 – 139).

An objection might be raised here that the genealogy to which Foucault refers covers the development of power dynamics from the classical era, and into the 16th and 17th centuries, and, as such, it has little to do with neoliberalism in the 20th and 21st centuries. This objection can, I believe, be addressed by acknowledging Foucault’s conclusion that these two strands of biopower were

‘…without question an indispensable element in the development of capitalism; the latter would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes’ (Foucault, 1990, p. 140)

If we accept the Foucauldian view – namely that the emergence of modern capitalism would not have been possible without (1) an anatomo-politics of the human body, and (2) a biopolitics of the population as twin ‘techniques of power’ (ibid) that tied the interests of subjects to the interests of capital - then, by extension, we must accept the role played by biopolitics in what has become the seemingly unstoppable rise of hegemonic neoliberalism. If this is the case, then it becomes possible to trace a clear intellectual line in Foucault’s thought from The History Of Sexuality to his Paris lectures a few years later, and his apparent turn towards neoliberalism becomes less surprising. As Foucault discusses in his lecture of March 14th, 1979, the neoliberal world is one of human capital and individual entrepreneurship in which the economic actor is concerned not with simply exchanging their labour for payment, but with partaking in what Foucault calls the ‘enterprise activity’ of production in which the end goal is the creation of their own satisfaction (see Foucault, 2004, p. 226). Such ‘enterprise activity’ is simply an expression of the previously referenced utopian possibilities and potentials Foucault codified in The History Of Sexuality. Beyond providing managerial oversight of the aforementioned anatomo-politics and bio-politics of the population, the role of the state – as far as it exists – is, at most, concerned with the administration of a neoliberal societal model within which

‘…the analysis of non-economic behaviour (is assessed) through a grid of economic intelligibility, and the criticism and appraisal of the actions of public authorities (are seen) in market terms’ (Foucault, 2004, p. 248).

Put another way, absolutely everything in the world can be viewed through an economic lens and the job of the state is not to intervene or hinder – or ‘deduct’ to use Foucault’s word – but to facilitate and enable individuals in its population to become active, productive and self-perpetuating forces of themselves. The economy is everything and everything is the economy, or as Lemke notes ‘…the economy embraces the entirety of human action’ (Lemke, 2001, p. 197).

Part of the reason for Foucault’s largely non-critical account of neoliberalism is that he sees in it the opportunity for the marginalised subject to access at least a little power and autonomy – even the criminal is viewed as a risk-aware and autonomous individual making an economic choice based on a cost / benefit analysis (see Foucault, 2004, p. 253). Zamora (see Jacobian, 2019) summarises the point when he states that ‘neoliberalism…seems to offer a less constrictive framework for the proliferation of minoritarian experiments’. For Foucault, neoliberalism may have been a liberalism without humanism, but it was also a liberalism that offered something positive to the human, particularly the human at the fringes of society. As such, any struggle within society became less about class consciousness and revolution, and more about identity and individualisation. This is the point from which Zamora begins a sustained analysis of Foucault and raises concerns that, while Foucault cannot be held in any way responsible for the direction taken by neoliberalism, important omissions were made in his thinking about the path that might have been mapped out for neoliberalism in the late 20th century, and into the 21st.

Zamora identifies the later Foucault as largely abandoning the Marxist class struggle that sought to remedy unjust economic inequality. Zamora (2015, p. 65) states that, in Foucault’s view, the working class had ‘been rendered passive due to the rights it had acquired and its acceptance of bourgeois ideology’ and that the baseline ambition of struggle was no longer revolution or the wholesale redistribution of wealth, but the reshaping of minority / governmentality power dynamics within existing societal structures. In itself, there is little that is contentious in this assessment, although in terms of economic wellbeing vis-à-vis the unequal distribution of power, those on the Marxist left would be justified in calling attention to Zamora’s point that Foucault failed to adequately acknowledge the ‘relationship between exclusion and exploitation’ (Zamora, 2015, p. 67). This point was valid at the time of Foucault’s lectures and is even more salient now. Writing about contemporary Ireland, Hughes-Spence is right to note that as disadvantaged and marginalised young people struggle to find their worth in a neoliberal society, it is ‘…almost predictable that there is a strong positive relationship between crime and poverty’ (Hughes-Spence, 2021). Even if we accept that the criminal is a fully-cognizant entrepreneur of themselves, the question of the peripheral impacts of their criminality – societal, familial, economic and so on – must surely be addressed more adequately by advocates of neoliberalism than it is, or ever has been. The relationship between neoliberalism, crime and violence is a theme I shall return to in Chapter 3. Lamont and Guay (2014) make a further point about neoliberalism being a mechanism of power-exclusion for the marginalised, noting that in the United States ‘…recent years have seen the voice of the average American crowded out by the pockets of large corporations’. The most significantly impacted demographics in this crowding-out are the ‘lower classes and minorities’ traditionally represented by the nominally left of centre Democratic Party – which perhaps serves as an illustration of the left’s previously referenced ‘capitulation’ to neoliberalism. According to Lamont and Guay, it is these people – the already marginalised - who suffer most severely as a result of welfare cuts and are the least-equipped to respond positively to the challenges of life at the fringes. The perceived economic benefits of neoliberalism may allow everyone to become a player in the game, but not everyone is on the same playing field. As previously alluded to, the later Foucault ceased to consider poverty and economic inequality as an overwhelmingly problematic issue of class in the late 20th century, instead turning his attention towards ‘diffuse domination’ and matters of micro-control and resistance (see Zamora, 2015, p. 67). While this can be viewed as a logical development of Foucault’s thought, without further exploration, it leaves a fundamental question frustratingly unanswered: that of how a person at the margins might be expected to respond just as effectively to what Zamora refers to as ‘exclusion and exploitation’ as an individual already fully integrated into – and prospering – in a society. The challenges with this are accentuated by Foucault’s discussion of negative tax (see Foucault, 2004, pp. 203 – 205). Here, we get some insight into one of the ways in which neoliberalism might address the issues of ‘exclusion and exploitation’, and while the insight – and Foucault’s non-critical engagement with it - might disappoint, or even outrage, some, it at least shows a Foucault consistent in developing his intellectual view and willing to explore new possibilities in the wake of what he considered the shortcomings of post-1968 socialism in France.

Briefly outlined, negative tax is an idea attributed to the Chicago School that says those without the financial means to meet a level at which they can participate in the economic world as an active consumer would, through the mechanisms of the tax system, be provided with enough financial means to facilitate their economic role – Foucault refers to it as ‘a safety clause for the player’ and an ‘inverted social contract’ (Foucault, 2004, p. 202). It can be thought of as a neoliberal interpretation of a progressive minimum income guarantee with the crucial difference that there would be no distinction between the so-called worthy and unworthy poor and no stipulations placed upon recipients in terms of the work they do or do not do, their spending habits, how they fill their time, and so on. The rules of the game – that is, neoliberal economics itself – would not bend to accommodate the players, even if

‘…this means giving up the idea that society as a whole owes services like health and education to each of its members, and even if also…it means reintroducing an imbalance between the poor and others, between those receiving aid and those who are not’ (Foucault, 2004, pp. 203 – 204).

Such a system would essentially mothball the concept of the welfare state, instead handing freedom and responsibility to the individual economic actor to access the essential services they need, when they need them, just as they would in any other economic transaction. If an economic actor is unable to access such essential services when needed due to having made choices to spend elsewhere, it would be of no concern to the neoliberal economy or its associated governmentality – its role is simply to facilitate the choice for the economic actor, not to dictate their conduct in normative terms. Foucault points out that a negative tax arrangement only offers ‘…the possibility of minimal existence at a given level’ (Foucault, 2004, p. 207), which allows everyone to play the economic game regardless of their life choices while not disincentivising work, on the understanding that they will not have the safety nets with which we are familiar – the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, for example. Of such possibilities, Foucault says ‘…it is absolutely clear that the policy entailed by negative tax is the exact opposite of socialist policy’ (Foucault, 2004, p. 205) and he appears supremely comfortable with this possibility. However, a slight note of caution is needed in thinking this is the end of the story. I have already mentioned the general pushback against radical socialism in Foucault’s France during the 1970s. Zamora (2016) offers a further perspective, hinting that Foucault’s apparent shift may not be a complete abandonment of the left, but rather ‘…an opportunity to think about what an ‘anti-statist’ left might look like’.

The question remains as to why Foucault fails to foresee the direction of travel that an inherently conservative and potentially authoritarian neoliberal juggernaut would take, but it is not implausible to suggest that in entertaining neoliberalism on a purely theoretical basis, he was in fact exploring new possibilities for an as yet undiscovered socialism unafraid to sever its links with an overwhelmingly statist and moribund Marxism (see Zamora, 2016). As yet, this socialism – if it exists – remains undiscovered and the left continues to fall over its feet in a stampede of well-intentioned but underachieving identity politics. Perhaps the lesson to learn from Foucault is that of the ongoing need for a Nietzschean vitalism that is unafraid to provoke and dissent from its own foundational assumptions (see Bitton, 2023).    

So far, my critique in this section has developed around two main themes: that neoliberalism is a liberalism without humanism, and that Foucault’s shift in thinking from socialism and towards neoliberalism, was a means of avoiding ‘all those ways of controlling the body, conduct, sexuality that are so present…in many socialist policies aimed at reducing inequality’ (Zamora, 2015, p. 77).  To conclude this chapter, I will briefly evaluate Foucault’s ‘apology’ for neoliberalism as placed on record by his student, editor and interlocutor, François Ewald. In order to do this, I will draw on a lecture given by Mitchell Dean in 2014. The lecture offers a valuable perspective, not least in pointing out that Foucault was certainly not entirely uncritical of neoliberalism.

As expressed by Dean, Ewald’s claim is that Foucault’s Paris lectures constitute an endorsement of neoliberal economics as formulated by Becker and other Chicago School economists. Dean points out that neoliberal economists provided a non-moral and non-juridical theory of effective governmentality that socialism failed to offer (see Dean, 2014, p. 434). The suggestion from Ewald is, simply put, that Foucault saw in neoliberal economics the potential for a new freedom, in which the individual would be free of the controls, disciplines and punishments that had vexed Foucault for so much of his career. If Ewald is correct, neoliberalism is the catalyst that brings about ‘the end of the philosophical relevance of the state’ (Dean, 2014, p. 435) and this would dovetail with developments in Foucault’s own thinking about shifts in power relations from the sovereign to the non-subjective, anatomo-political and bio-political.

In pursuing the line of thought that neoliberalism offered a practical governmentality that socialism failed to offer, Dean offers a cautious conclusion that

‘Rather than an apology for neoliberalism…Foucault belonged to a present in which neoliberalism was shifting from a militant, if marginal, thought collective to a regime of the government of the state’ (Dean, 2014, p. 440)

Viewed in this sympathetic light, and considering Foucault’s methodology of creating genealogical ‘histories of the present’ (see Garland, 2014), a case can be made for Foucault’s relationship with neoliberalism being not one of apology and much less of endorsement, but of exploration. By way of expanding this line of thought, a further point might be made here concerning the paradox of the economic man and what Dean (2014, p. 436) pinpoints as ‘…the relationship between neoliberalism and behavioural techniques of manipulation through adjusting stimuli in the environment’. There is seemingly a current within neoliberalism that defines homo ǣconomicus as simultaneously ‘the person to be let alone’ and ‘someone manageable…someone who responds systematically to systematic modifications artificially introduced into the environment’ (Foucault in Dean, 2014, p. 436). Becker’s response to this apparent contradiction, namely that ‘…within (a) broad spectrum, people have a variety of choices they can take…’ (Becker in Dean, 2014, p. 436) is unsatisfying and somewhat of a non-answer to an important question. Dean does not pursue the point in his lecture, but it is, in my view, a crucial one that reveals the true nature of neoliberalism. A case can be made that while it may not have been apparent in Foucault’s time, it is certainly apparent now that the ‘broad spectrum’ referred to by Becker is not some kind of passive, non-interventionist structure of neutrality that simply happens to exist apropos of nothing. It is a creation with a clear role to play. It is an active construct designed and maintained by the forces of neoliberalism itself, for the purposes of inculcation. It is the referee of the game, the mediator of freedom, the ultimate judge of conduct. It is the courtroom of neoliberal discipline and punishment. It is the ever watchful eye of the new panopticon.

In an extended version of the lecture to which I have been referring, Dean points out that in terms of neoliberal policy, Foucault’s lectures do not focus on ‘…the strategies of their introduction nor on the struggles or resistances they might provoke…’ (Dean, 2016, p. 96). With some 40 years of hindsight not afforded to Foucault, we are now in a much better position to explore neoliberalism in terms of its strategies, and any resistance toward it. It is to such an analysis that I will now turn.

Chapter 3. Surveillance, Suppression and New Forms of Power.

‘Where there is power, there is resistance…’ (Foucault, 1990, p. 94).

This does not mean that where there is a powerful government, there will be an anti-government movement. It does not mean that a powerful employer will have to answer to a trade union. It does not mean that poor boardroom decisions will be interrogated by frustrated shareholders. Or, rather, it does not just mean these things. There are, of course, anti-government movements, active trade unions and influential organisations that seek to protect the interests of shareholders. Respectively, such resistors might engage in civil disobedience, calls for strike action or high impact media campaigns – activities that Foucault refers to as ‘great radical ruptures (and) binary mass divisions’ (Foucault, 1990, p. 95). Beyond this, there are any number of acts of resistance that trigger revolutions and change the course of history. These are the acts we most easily associate with resistance or rebellion, and they inform this discussion. However, Foucault does not have a clear, ontological view of power: for him, there is no simple delineation of government / protester, employer / trade union, corporation / campaigner and so on. Instead, power for Foucault is understood as

‘…the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate, and which constitute their own organisation; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens or reverses them…’ (Foucault, 1990, p. 92).

It may appear reductive to say that, for Foucault, power is everywhere. But it is a conclusion he reaches himself, adding that this is the case ‘…not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere’ (ibid). If we accept such an interpretation of power, we too must accept that resistance to power could well – indeed, should well – take a different form to the aforementioned radical ruptures and mass divisions. In an increasingly nuanced and complex world, no longer can it be sufficient for the resistor to think only in terms of clear-cut opposition and conflict. From this starting point, questions can be extrapolated not only as to the worth of struggle or the value of resistance in the traditional terms by which we have come to understand them, but also to the consideration of new modes of struggle. If power itself should be thought of not as a monolithic macro-beast, but as a billion isolated micro-bugs, resistance needs to be reconsidered, and resistors must be aware not only of the nature of that which they oppose, but also why they oppose and how they oppose. Like power, resistance cannot be one-dimensional or static.

A word of clarification is necessary here: I have previously referred to Becker’s ‘broad spectrum’ (of personal choice within neoliberal governmentalities) as an ‘active construct’ and as a ‘creation’ of power. This paints a picture of contemporary neoliberal power as something considered, all-encompassing and meticulously planned, somewhat in contrast to Foucault’s non-ontological perception of diffuse domination. But, in the case of neoliberalism which is, as previously discussed, an ideology that incorporates the economic, the political, the social and the cultural into its broad entirety, there is no unease or tension between the two expressions or forms of power – the governmental and the diffuse. With power functioning as what I termed a ‘billion isolated micro-bugs’, a larger societal whole is invariably manifested: a biometric and biomechanical machine of countless moving parts. As such, neoliberalism functions at macro and micro levels, assembling its own psychological and emotional carceral almost as a by-product of its own dispersed discourses. In some sense, and in contrast to Marxist readings of power dynamics as expressed in unequal class relationships for example, at least some neoliberal power structures have come into being somewhat by accident – although once in existence, their ongoing maintenance and administration is entirely calculated, with the forces of domination becoming the curators of life, or what Foucault identified as the ‘technicians of behaviour, engineers of conduct, orthopedists of individuality’ (Foucault, 1986, p. 235). Power is not just everywhere. It is everything. As such, resistance can be multitudinous. It too can be found everywhere, and in everything.

Given that it is conceivable, even likely, that we can no longer think about protest or resistance to power in terms of radical rupture, mass division or the type of oppositional conflict that Marxists see between the proletariat and the capitalist class, it does not follow that a neoliberal society is a society free of conflict. Indeed, I speculate that the opposite is true and that there is an inevitability for dissent and protest to grow in neoliberal societies as a consequence of the fragmentation and fracture that is hard-wired into neoliberal subjectivity. There is evidence to support this view. Brannen et al (2020) have charted the growth of mass protest in the decade following the global financial crisis of 2008/09 - itself not unrelated to the barely-regulated practices of neoliberal economies (see Investopedia, 2020) – and found levels of protest to be ‘historically unprecedented’ around the globe. Although unemployment and perceptions of wealth inequality are identified by Brannen et al as drivers of protest, they are by no means the only ones: the growth of information communications technology and social networking; declining civil rights; police and juridical corruption; urbanisation and the ever-worsening climate crisis are all significant factors now, and likely into the future too (see Brannen et al, 2020, pp. 15 – 21),

As a species, we are divided. It sometimes seems irrevocably so. Everyday difference, within which exists the potential both for unity and division, is manipulated by bad actors and exploited by established power. There has been criticism of Foucault regarding his apparent ambivalence towards protest, certainly in comparison with more oppositional philosophical perspectives – although Behrent is right to stress that while Foucault’s thought is ‘ideally suited to an age of fracture’ (Behrent, 2024), his inspiration has never been revolutionary, regardless of how some on the left continue to ‘…fantasise about a shotgun wedding of Foucault and Marx’ (ibid). Perhaps the correct question to ask is whether, in the neoliberal era, traditional modes of protest are contributing anything positive to a repeatedly hoped-for, long demanded and often justifiable redesign of power. We can see, for instance, that while in 2019, a significant majority (66%) of British citizens considered manmade climate change to be the ‘biggest global threat’, a smaller but still notable majority (54%) actively opposed the non-violent direct action of environmental activism group Extinction Rebellion (see Armstrong, 2019). One wonders what might prompt widespread and urgent oppositional action if not a struggle for the very survival of the planet, but this question is answered in some part when we note findings from the UK’s internet regulator Ofcom which state that almost one in three British internet users ‘…are unsure about, or don’t even consider, the truthfulness of online information’ (Ofcom, 2023). A further 6% ‘believe everything they see online’ (ibid). With younger content-consumers in particular increasingly reliant on accessing news and information instantaneously via mobile devices (see Oxford University, 2017), the internet in general, and social media in particular, is a valuable tool for those wishing to spread mis- and dis-information, and for those needing to sow division in order to protect vested interests. Neoliberalism does not hesitate to create the subjects it needs. Power has always harnessed the reach of media, and this remains the case with current and emerging digital medias, although there is a crucial difference in that the end user is no longer a vacuous consumer of media and the ideas contained therein, but an active participant, an algorithmic product, an automative subject: simultaneously independent and not.

Additionally, it must be considered whether even broadly-supported protest, in its traditional forms (marches, static demonstrations and sit-ins, for example), would have the ability to affect change given the proliferation of the new panopticons – the contemporary tools of surveillance and control that, in a digital era, have the opportunity to monitor individuals, dictate behaviour and shape ideas in a way that we do not yet perhaps fully grasp. Is the 21st century agitator better advised to spend her time mastering the skills of filmmaking, social media engagement and hacking, rather than those of placard-making and locking on? And given the seemingly unstoppable growth of the neoliberal free market, might it be that quiet economic boycotts and under-the-radar divestments have more real-world power than headline-grabbing displays of frustration? In response to these questions, and inspired by the suggestion from Shams et al (2024) that in focusing on the political and economic effects of neoliberalism, protest movements do not give sufficient attention to neoliberalism’s ‘cultural dysfunction’, I am minded to tentatively suggest that only by asserting a fierce intellectual freedom not reliant on grandiose gestures or ideological purities, and by claiming a truly individualistic bodily autonomy in our everyday actions, is it possible to reclaim and nurture a productive form of subject-specific biopower capable of real impacts, in contrast to more visible and dramatic forms of protest, which although not without their place in terms of raising awareness, somewhat play into the hands of neoliberal governmentality. Put another way, if neoliberal governmentality has become so omnipotent and gargantuan as to be essentially unbeatable in its entirety, we must instead prosper by asserting individual power in response to individual challenges in the first instance. In this way, we risk the allegation that our resistance may not be sufficiently confrontational, but equally, we avoid the pitfall of it becoming impotently performative.

Crucially, we should recall that Foucault is not silent about, much less resistant to, political action. He speaks of the rights and duties of the ‘international citizenship’ to speak out ‘against every abuse of power’, adding that

‘The suffering of men must never be a silent residue of policy. It grounds an absolute right to stand up and speak to those who hold power’ (Foucault, 1994, p. 474).

In recognising Foucault’s non-normative account of power, Allen and Goddard (2014) are able to situate Foucauldian resistance within a milieu of radicalism, without reference to Marxism or any other ideological schema. From a Foucauldian perspective, ‘…the need for multiple struggles that together constitute a radically fragmented form of collective action’ is evident, given ‘the multiform and protean nature of power’ (Allen and Goddard, 2014, p. 42). Thought of this way, it becomes apparent that struggle defined by the normative terms of the society in which it exists is a struggle that – even if successful – will perpetuate the normativity by which it is defined, and accordingly, the destructive and oppressive cycles already prevalent in said society will continue to function by another name. Van Wijk (2022) is therefore right to note that many, if not all, organisations that stand against any established order ‘carry within themselves a dynamic and hierarchy resembling the order they reject’ (van Wijk, 2022, p. 1106).

Perhaps to break a cycle of protest that merely assumes the age-old traits of entrenched power, entirely new norms have to be internalised, in contrast to norms that simply imitate the society that gave them birth: for instance, instead of assuming the ready-made identities of Marxism, or becoming neoliberal entrepreneurs of ourselves, fighting for our own glory, or even just our own survival, we should develop a new ‘mechanics of power’ (see Foucault, 1986, p. 182). Might we become self-actualising resistors of ourselves; that is, resistors not moulded and manipulated by the storms of zeitgeist that batter us; resistors cognizant of the fact that we claim a personal liberty beyond existing politics, economics or ideology; a libertarianism not defined by the governmentality that brought it into being: a reclamation of the subject body as machine, working within and for the species body, not within and for ‘…the expansion of productive forces and differential allocation of profit…’ (Foucault, 1990, p. 140).

In the event that such a being can somehow be summoned into existence, this ‘new resistor’ (to use a place-holding term) functions as an individual, but with the motivation of collective betterment. In this sense, individual liberty ceases to be a successful end, and instead becomes the means to a successful end – although even to call it an ‘end’ is in itself misleading. If we accept Foucault’s assessment that most people struggle not against particular institutions, groups, elites or classes of power, but against ‘…rather a technique, a form of power’ (Foucault, 1982, p. 781), then we accept that, even in the case of a revolutionary ‘victory’ against an oppressive regime, there is no end point, only a rearrangement of the chess pieces of power. So, operating within a Foucauldian oeuvre, this new resistor would not be committed to the end of struggle, much less to the end of history, but to ongoing agonism and a ‘permanent provocation’ of freedom and power (see Foucault, 1982, p. 790). There is, of course, much that is pure speculation in the suggestion that we, as a species, can somehow morph into new types of individuals – what I termed ‘new resistors’ – capable of entering into new dialogues not only with the power(s) embedded in the dominant forces of neoliberalism, capitalism and broader governmentality, but also capable of engaging more deeply with ourselves as a resistance-method against authoritarian forces. But while revolutions can undoubtedly change the world overnight, lasting peace, prosperity and security are still only a pipe dream for many – not least those living through revolution and its aftermath. The need for new discourses of resistance is pressing. Driven by the desire of neoliberal power to harvest knowledge and assert control over the subjects it produces, modern technologies and their applications are creating a world in which dizzying change is the only constant, and where new panopticons are coming to dominate both our physical and virtual worlds. To conclude this chapter, I briefly look at two examples of how neoliberal power has come to make itself omnipresent, freely expressing its authoritarian tendencies within a democratic paradigm.

The riots and disorder during the summer of 2024 following the murder of three girls in Southport have once again ignited the debate about facial recognition technology and put it into the public space, with British politicians accused of ‘ignoring civil rights and aping autocracies’ (see Sabbagh, 2024). But these concerns are not new. A 2023 investigation has discovered that 2022 saw a ‘330% increase in the number of searches using a form of facial recognition’, with the stored images being compared to images taken from sources that are now commonplace such as CCTV and dash cams (see Wilding and Milmo, 2023). Of perhaps even greater concern in terms of democracy and public discourse is the denial from 13 British police forces of using retrospective facial recognition – despite the Home Office confirming that such technology has been used by all 45 territorial police forces (see Wilding and Milmo, 2023). There are myriad concerns about the use of facial recognition and its potential to violate civil liberties and human rights, and these are vitally important. But we must address a further issue that is, in my view, crucial to understanding how modern capitalism, in the guise of neoliberalism, is an ideology and a governmentality that fails on its own terms. Senior police officers and government ministers are on record as saying that facial recognition is a vital surveillance tool in reducing crime and calming disorder (see Wilding and Milmo, 2023), and yet, as previously discussed, the rise of neoliberalism (and associated surveillance) has coincided with an exponential loss of faith in democracy, and a rise in, often violent, protest. A case can be made for asserting that the enforcement tools of neoliberal governmentality, often authoritarian or even para-militaristic in nature, are doing little to help democracy or to decrease conflict, and that ‘…broadly speaking, more cameras do not necessarily reduce crime rates’ (Bischoff, 2023). Šumonja (2020) goes a step further, arguing that neoliberalism has moved on from its first two phases (the ‘vanguard’ and the ‘progressive’), into an ‘authoritarian’ phase characterised by the co-opting of autocratic expressions of power in which ‘…the last vestiges of the façade of democracy and social libertarianism are falling off capitalism before our eyes’ (Šumonja, 2020, p. 222). Seen this way, neoliberalism reveals itself to have only a passing acquaintance with the application of liberal values for its populations. With neoliberalism thus exposed as a fundamentally oppressive and authoritarian mechanism that offers only a pretence of freedom, it can but surrender whatever economic or ethical worth it may once have had to the kind of perpetual agonism not yet discovered by the resistor.

Whatever its motivation or effectiveness, the use of facial recognition at such an industrial scale is a tool only afforded to powerful state actors. Not so social media, a technological creation now so ubiquitous as to be barely noteworthy, one might think. But it is precisely its ubiquity that makes social media of such interest to neoliberal governmentalities. There is no need to construct a physical panopticon on every street corner when we are happy to carry one in our pocket and freely engage with it regularly, perhaps for several hours a day. Social media does a better job of monitoring conduct and of creating individuals with acceptable internalised values than many institutions of discipline, punishment and observation, and with a good degree less overt coercion. The task of neoliberal power – one it can deliver by maintaining its dominant presence in education, work and other institutions where power is uneven – is simply to continue creating products and platforms that we are happy to continue plugging into. Social media surveillance is a threat to personal privacy often not understood by the end user and evidence exists of corporations acquiring personal data from what appear to be the most innocuous of social media interactions (see Flowerday and van der Schyff, 2019). But of perhaps even greater significance in terms of subject-autonomy, self-actualisation and the potential of our species to commit itself to resistance in the shape of ongoing agonism, is the idea of ‘imagined surveillance’ proffered by Duffy and Chan (2019). The internalisation of concerns associated with imagined surveillance leads users to present themselves cautiously or inauthentically, fearful of what might happen should they present a true picture of themselves to the watching world. Social media users – often young and new to the norms of structures such as the job market – are inhibited at a profound level, fearful to such a degree that they choose to submit to a type of self-imposed restraint that

‘…reveals the hidden curriculum of a surveillance culture, that is, how social media users are socialized to accommodate acts of ubiquitous social media monitoring, particularly those that reaffirm unequal power relations (Duffy and Chan, 2019, p. 121).  

Ultimately, neoliberal governmentality can and does resort to violence. But in administering life and promoting ‘freedom’ it would rather not dirty its hands by engaging in physical confrontation with the docile subjects it has lovingly crafted. Imagined surveillance is, therefore, a useful weapon: it is Bentham’s panopticon beautifully reimagined as an essential online life-hack; an incarceration by invisible chains; a digitised intellectual bondage we cannot resist and do not wish to escape. Social media surveillance – real and imagined – is a correctional facility we are free to leave at any time, but choose to remain locked up within. We have been gifted the tools of our own submission. Given this, governmentalities only need to unleash oppression on those rare occasions we fail to sufficiently oppress ourselves.    

Chapter 4. Conclusion: Even As Imperfect Beings.

‘Nothing is fundamental […] There are only reciprocal relations, and the perpetual gaps between intentions in relation to one another’. (Foucault, 1986, p. 247).

Critics of neoliberal governmentality would argue that it is difficult to conceive of a world in which such an institution develops a brand new conscience and redesigns itself around compassion or empathy for broader humanity. Beyond that which the law demands of it, it appears to have little interest in the promotion of fairness or equality – and even then, it does not blink when contesting the law or hesitate to reshape the law in its own image and to suit its own ends. As history unfolds, neoliberalism may become known by some other name, but in terms of the biopower and biopolitics it deploys as techniques of sovereignty or control, its key tenets will alter little and its ability to ride roughshod over what many might consider greater goods will remain intact. As discussed, I question to what extent any kind of revolutionary action can ever defeat or even reform neoliberalism; as previously noted, neoliberalism may hide in plain sight, but its reach, response and impact are so dominant, diffuse and tactically astute, that it becomes not just a moving target, but an often invisible one. To utilise a war metaphor, it is not one enemy, but many. Any ultimate failure of neoliberalism will be brought about by its own hubris, and its desire for infinite growth on a finite planet. For those who see the shortcomings of rapacious neoliberalism, there is no comfort to be found in the prospect of securing ‘victory’ on a dead planet.

Even in opposing it, we will most likely need to co-exist with neoliberalism, or whatever form of rampant, oppressive capitalism comes to replace it, in some form or another. In itself, voicing our opposition is not necessarily difficult: neoliberalism allows room for dissent, even encourages it within certain limits – although it increasingly attempts to administer the terms and spaces of that dissent. But, in isolation, dissent is not sufficient. It will achieve little in the way of improving life for those receiving a raw deal. On this, Ferguson (2010) is right to stress that being ‘anti‘ is not enough:

‘Anti-globalisation, anti-neoliberalism; anti-privatisation, anti-imperialism; anti-Bush, perhaps even anti-capitalism – but always ‘anti’, never ‘pro’. This is good enough, perhaps, if one’s political goal is simply to denounce ‘the system’ and decry its current tendencies. And, indeed, some seem satisfied with such a politics’ (Ferguson, 2010, p. 166).

But, as Ferguson goes on to say (2010, pp. 166 – 167), it is not a display of revelatory or revolutionary thinking to reach conclusions which state that the poor lack money, the homeless lack homes and the powerless lack power. Nor is it especially helpful to stress, over and over, that this is a bad state of affairs. The undesirability of such predicaments is self-evident and repeatedly drawing attention to them while offering little in the way of practical solution is of no help to anyone. By way of addressing this problem, Ferguson suggests that those of an anti-disposition must become pro-something if ever the life circumstances of the most vulnerable and marginalised are to improve. To do this successfully, Ferguson argues, it may be necessary for opponents of neoliberalism to engage if not with neoliberalism itself, then certainly with the art of neoliberal government; to cease thinking of neoliberalism as synonymous with irredeemable evil and to instead consider, if only in a discursive sense, whether neoliberal governmental strategy can, in some cases, be repurposed for positive outcomes. Ferguson cites the example of a basic income grant in South Africa – an ‘investment in human capital’ based on precisely the sort of negative tax economic model discussed previously and deemed worthy of note by Foucault – as an example of when neoliberalism might work for the powerless, not against them (see Ferguson, 2010, pp. 174 – 176).

I agree with Ferguson that the continual waving of an anti flag may appear, in practical, action-based terms, a largely redundant act, although it is fair to note that such an act might raise initial awareness of a problem, and this can be important in itself. Eventually though, proposed solutions to a problem have to follow. In light of my earlier comment about there being little likelihood of neoliberalism disappearing, I find myself further agreeing with Ferguson that, in subjective terms, we simply have to engage with neoliberalism in some form or other if we wish to continue living any kind of worthwhile life in the world, although the nature and degree of our engagement should be carefully weighed. While it is undoubtedly true that engaging with the art of neoliberal government makes us think in terms other than simple denunciation (see Ferguson, 2010, p. 181), we should be careful not to leave denunciation behind entirely. This does not mean positioning ourselves on ‘the seductive high ground of revolutionary ideals and utopian ideals’ (ibid), and Ferguson is correct to echo Foucault in advocating for oppositional innovation in addressing power imbalances (see Ferguson, 2010, p. 183). However, we should not be content to be just players (or subjects) in the game - governed by the game, moulded by the game and bound by the rules of the game even when the rules of the game are demonstrably unfair. Ferguson does not account for the potential of Foucauldian critique to undermine the many appearances of power and to shift societal foci. We should acknowledge that as much as we may need to channel it into productivity of some positive type, there remains a place in our discourses for raw and unfiltered anger. As practice, we should be angry at injustice and we should call it out, even when our granted ‘freedom’ within the neoliberal game does not allow us to do so. To play the game entirely on someone else’s terms is as self-defeating as not playing the game at all. The will to curiosity and provocation, and an engagement with established systems of power, should not be mutually exclusive. This should not be mistaken for a call to anarchism or revolution, merely a call to consider how one might attain a self-aware and genuine freedom from the panoptic carceral of modernity (which, in itself, would mean one questioning forms of anarchy and revolution just as much as one might question neoliberalism or capitalism).  To corrupt a common idiom, our obligation is to think outside the boxes we place ourselves in. Schubert (2021) offers valuable insight around freedom within neoliberal governmentalities, asserting that freedom as critique   

‘…is a movement that always aims at transgressing itself and thereby reaches as much independence and distance from subjectification as possible. Freedom as critique is an internalized hermeneutics of suspicion that always critically rechecks everything, including itself. It never stops but adds critical operation upon critical operation’ (Schubert, 2021, p. 644).

As we move towards a conclusion, Schubert’s point is a valuable one. In seeking to map a path as far away from individual and state subjectification as is possible, he follows Foucault who himself stresses the crucial importance of stepping away from both externally and internally defined modes of being, and says that ‘…the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are’ (Foucault, 1994, p. 335).

Highly-motivated and well-intentioned opponents of state, governmental and other structural powers can precisely and at length articulate often accurate diagnoses of urgent worldwide problematics – poverty, hunger, environmental collapse and so on. In many cases, they can offer compelling solutions that, in moral terms at least, are hard to dispute. Furthermore, campaigners and radical activists share a trait with politicians and holders of office in that they can all identify where they stand within (or without) existing power structures: they are anti-establishment, anti-government and anti-capitalist; they are left, right, centrist and green. They are conservative, socialist, liberal and neoliberal. Such identifiers are useful in quickly understanding and assessing our actions, interactions and ideas. But such identifiers are only products of the state and its institutions; an invention of normativity; a troublesome but ultimately controllable offspring of the power that gave birth to it. To progress our understanding of power, protest and politics in the contemporary world, we must first understand ourselves as clearly as the new panopticons do. As Foucault notes

‘…the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days is not to try to liberate the individual from the state, and from the state’s institutions, but to liberate us from both the state and the individualization linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality that has been imposed on us for several centuries’ (ibid).

Towards the start of this discussion, I identified three specific themes I wished to explore. Firstly, Foucault’s assessment of neoliberalism. Secondly, criticism of Foucault’s assessment from the political left which claims that Foucault was too quick to embrace and endorse neoliberal thought. Thirdly, I wanted to assess whether the paradox at the core of neoliberalism leaves the ideology fatally flawed in terms of its propensity to violence and its inability to (co)exist peacefully with the citizens it produces. In addition to these themes, I wanted to explore the importance of subjectification and wished to speculate that in 2024 Foucault would offer a quite different view of neoliberalism than the one he offered in his Biopolitics lectures. I suspect that a 2024 Foucault would be quick to identify the countless ways in which neoliberalism has failed the very people he thought might most benefit from its tenets, and he would not hesitate to adjust his thinking, tracing a new line of possibilities, just as he did from The History of Sexuality to the later Paris lectures. I hypothesise that previously critical elements of the political left would embrace the Foucault of 2024, with both parties likely to be deeply concerned about the all-consuming nature of neoliberalism as power in the 21st century – although, in understanding Foucault’s reading of power, this would be to miss the point somewhat. If Foucault in 2024 were to take a leftish turn, it would be because of an intellectual trajectory which, just for a moment in time, happened to pass through a territory occupied by the left, rather than any ideological rebirth in which Foucault was baptised as a card-carrying socialist: the lesson to take is not whether we endorse a leftish worldview, a neoliberal worldview or any other dogmatic worldview, but that our thinking becomes proactive, agile and adaptable to the eras in which it exists. That we should be free even – especially – from our own beliefs.

In addressing its key points, this discussion has dipped its toe into many academic areas including economics, social policy, politics, surveillance studies and philosophy, and tried to plot an epistemic course through many aspects of human knowledge-experience in a neoliberal world, including violence, material inequality and resistance to power, to name just three. This approach is not unintentional. In exploring the topic of power in such a way, the discussion is reflective of Foucault’s conclusion that power is to be found everywhere (see Foucault, 1990, p. 92). In response, even as imperfect beings, we must be as panopticons and endeavour to monitor all things, in all places, at all times.

There are pressing matters of injustice and inequality all over the world. There are too many people living lives of fear, poverty and war. There are too many people for whom daily existence is a tightrope walk between life and death. The people who Ferguson identifies as ‘anti’, or who I characterise as ‘new resistors’, should not shy away from fighting the battles that need to be fought. We should resist when resistance is needed. We should speak out when power would prefer us to be cowed into silence. But in taking these stands, our motivation should be finding a resolution of the problem, not a revolution of the perfect, for it is unlikely that such a thing exists. Even if perfect revolution does exist, it may only occur organically as one problem, then another, then another, is resolved. It will be a revolution of permanent unfolding, not a fixed point in time that we can identify as the end. Furthermore, in fighting these essential battles, we should know that it is necessary for us to maintain oversight of the wider discourses and new dialogues we must establish with ourselves. It is true that we cannot allow ourselves to be defined by the chains of our oppression. But in resisting power, nor should we be defined by the illusions of what we might consider freedom.   

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