Michel Foucault's Investigation of Neo-liberalism: Governmentality and Biopolitics

This research is about Michel Foucault’s investigation of neo-liberalism in the context of these two notions: governmentality and biopolitics. These two notions were chosen because they are two the most important notions in Foucauldian theoretical apparatus, which he uses in the context of investigation of neo-liberalism. Governmentality and biopolitics reveal Foucault’s overall approach to the problem of neo-liberalism in general and to his methodological approach in particular. Moreover, I provide valuable suggestions for the possible applications of these notions in further research. Biopolitics is the notion, that, according to Foucault, can be used for the critical investigation of political practices, while governmentality is the notion, that can be used not in the direct application to the political practices, but as a frame of investigation of governing rationality. According to Foucault, governing rationality of neo-liberalism uses political economy as its main source of knowledge. Thus, further research with the application of the notion of governmentality should use economics as the object of investigation. Importance of this research lies in the fact, that Foucault’s notions of governmentality and biopolitics recently gained extreme popularity. Thus, it is important to introduce theoretic clarity of these notions in order to support correspondence of the applications of these notions with the original Foucauldian project. I use critical philosophical investigation of the main Foucault’s works, which introduce these notions in the framework of investigation of neo-liberalism in order to achieve my research goal.