Page 75 - Šolsko polje, XXIX, 2018, no. 1-2: The Language of Neoliberal Education, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 75
m. a. peters ■ neoliberalism as political discourse ...
Foucault leaves us in no doubt about the production of subjectivi-
ty that issues from an abstract conception of human nature as fixed, es-
sential, rational, self-interested and universal and the method by which
in liberal cultures human beings have been made subjects through politi-
cal discourse and regimes of power/knowledge that operates as a form of
political economy, a manner of governing liberal states through the econ-
omy that depends on the government of individuals in era dominated by
global markets.
Some critics point out that Foucault was the first political thinker to
take Nietzsche seriously. He says in a biographical fragment that he start-
ed reading Nietzsche in 1953 and immediately understood Nietzsche’s ba-
sic ethos that questions of power stand at the center of philosophy, a con-
dition exercised by all living beings determining who they are in terms of
their beliefs and values. Foucault’s early understanding of Nietzsche ena-
bled him to understand power as distributed, positive and constitutive of
the subjects operating though their subjectivities – to understand pow-
er outside both liberal and Marxist political discourses that hypothesis
power metaphysically as an entity with essential characteristics possessed
by the State. As is now well known, Foucault utilising Nietzsche’s fun-
damental insight of power in relation to ’knowledge’ begins to develop
the institutional and discursive formation of human subjects – they do
not exhibit an essence but rather are made through discourse and the net-
works of power that define normativity – what is proper, what is ‘good’
and ‘bad’, what is ‘rational’, what is ‘criminal’, indeed, what is ‘human’:
‘Power produces knowledge…knowledge and power directly imply one
another’ (Foucault, 1977: p. 27).
One of the strongest influences on Foucault’s (1970) ‘The Order of
Discourse’ is to be found in Nietzsche’s (1887) Genealogy. A year later after
the inaugural lecture on discourse Foucault (1971) publishes ‘Nietzsche,
Genealogy, and History’ where he makes his debt obvious and traces
Nietzsche’s use of the term Herkunft to question the origin of moral pre-
conceptions. In the Genealogy Nietzsche begins with ‘My thoughts on the
descent of our moral prejudices’ (p. 4) which is hidden from us – as he says
‘We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers: and with good reason’ (p. 3);
and he describes his ‘characteristic scepticism’ formed when he was just
a boy about morality and the origin of moral categories ‘good’ and ‘bad’.
Thereupon he puts the questions:
under what conditions did man invent the value judgments good and
evil? and what value do they themselves have? Have they up to now ob-
structed or promoted human flourishing? Are they a sign of distress,
73
Foucault leaves us in no doubt about the production of subjectivi-
ty that issues from an abstract conception of human nature as fixed, es-
sential, rational, self-interested and universal and the method by which
in liberal cultures human beings have been made subjects through politi-
cal discourse and regimes of power/knowledge that operates as a form of
political economy, a manner of governing liberal states through the econ-
omy that depends on the government of individuals in era dominated by
global markets.
Some critics point out that Foucault was the first political thinker to
take Nietzsche seriously. He says in a biographical fragment that he start-
ed reading Nietzsche in 1953 and immediately understood Nietzsche’s ba-
sic ethos that questions of power stand at the center of philosophy, a con-
dition exercised by all living beings determining who they are in terms of
their beliefs and values. Foucault’s early understanding of Nietzsche ena-
bled him to understand power as distributed, positive and constitutive of
the subjects operating though their subjectivities – to understand pow-
er outside both liberal and Marxist political discourses that hypothesis
power metaphysically as an entity with essential characteristics possessed
by the State. As is now well known, Foucault utilising Nietzsche’s fun-
damental insight of power in relation to ’knowledge’ begins to develop
the institutional and discursive formation of human subjects – they do
not exhibit an essence but rather are made through discourse and the net-
works of power that define normativity – what is proper, what is ‘good’
and ‘bad’, what is ‘rational’, what is ‘criminal’, indeed, what is ‘human’:
‘Power produces knowledge…knowledge and power directly imply one
another’ (Foucault, 1977: p. 27).
One of the strongest influences on Foucault’s (1970) ‘The Order of
Discourse’ is to be found in Nietzsche’s (1887) Genealogy. A year later after
the inaugural lecture on discourse Foucault (1971) publishes ‘Nietzsche,
Genealogy, and History’ where he makes his debt obvious and traces
Nietzsche’s use of the term Herkunft to question the origin of moral pre-
conceptions. In the Genealogy Nietzsche begins with ‘My thoughts on the
descent of our moral prejudices’ (p. 4) which is hidden from us – as he says
‘We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers: and with good reason’ (p. 3);
and he describes his ‘characteristic scepticism’ formed when he was just
a boy about morality and the origin of moral categories ‘good’ and ‘bad’.
Thereupon he puts the questions:
under what conditions did man invent the value judgments good and
evil? and what value do they themselves have? Have they up to now ob-
structed or promoted human flourishing? Are they a sign of distress,
73
