Some Foucauldian Notes on Neoliberal Biopolitics and its Crisis
by Alessandro Simoncini
pp. 248-276 Issue 16 (8,2) – July-December 2021 ISSN (online): 2539/2239 ISSN (print): 2389-8232 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14718/SoftPower.2021.8.2.13
Abstract
This article aims at applying the concept of biopolitics to the analysis of neoliberalism understood as an historical form of the exercise of power. The first part briefly focuses on the foucaultian elaboration of the concept, bringing it back to the building site of studies on biopower opened after ‘68. The second part focuses on some aspects of the biopolitics of the welfare state and the neoliberal one, pointing out the historical transition from one to the other, underlining the differences between them. The third part proposes an hypothesis on the contemporary crisis of neoliberalism and its processes of subjectivation, getting to an assumption on the way in which, in pandemic capitalism, the Recovery Fund partially modifies the european neoliberal program by recovering planning elements rejected for decades as the antithesis of market freedom. However, the conclusion is that, contrary to what is hoped for by a certain euro-optimism, the suspension of the stability pact is unlikely to be followed by the spontaneous affirmation of a new post-pandemic welfare without the promotion of transnational political action.