‘The Social’ as a Tool of Governmentality. A Post-Foucauldian Critique of Liberal Political Ontology
‘The Social’ as a Tool of Governmentality. A Post-Foucauldian Critique of Liberal Political Ontology

Summary/Abstract: The main subject-matter of this paper is the political ontology of contemporary liberal democracies and the problems that the procedure of the formation of the body politic constitutes within this substantialist and individualistic ontology. By referring to Joseph Schumpeter's so-called realistic theory of democracy and the classic critique of the public sphere articulated by Walter Lippman, the author attempts to demonstrate the fundamental aporia that lurks within the democratic procedure of constructing what is public (the body politic) via public opinion, general elections and representative power, which in his opinion constitutes an element of greater governmentality of power, typical of a society of the West. To achieve this he confronts these now classic critiques of democracy (simultaneously constituting an argument in favour of its intensification and searching for promising routes of transformation) with Michel Foucault’s conception of liberalism as a technology of managing that which is social. This reference enables democracy to be perceived as an element of the modern rationality of governing, the structure of which is based on the simultaneous controlling and moulding of the political entity the People. If the mechanism of power is located at a level constitutive for the political process, within ‘sovereign’ political action, then it would seem that potential forms of resistance or political transformation are directed towards a kind of immanent change or transgression.

• Details
• Contents