DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 8-2018 Critique and neoliberalism in Michel Foucault Neal Miller DePaul University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Miller, Neal, "Critique and neoliberalism in Michel Foucault" (2018). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 259. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/259 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Critique and Neoliberalism in Michel Foucault Neal Miller A dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2018 Directed by Dr. Peg Birmingham Department of Philosophy College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences DePaul University Chicago, Illinois 1 the vortex of creation is the vortex of destruction the vortex of artistic creation is the vortex of self-destruction the vortex of political creation is the vortex of flesh destruction flesh is in the fire, it curls and terribly warps fat is in the fire, it drips and sizzling sings bones are in the fire the crack tellingly in subtle hieroglyphs of oracle charcoal singed the smell of your burning hair for every revolutionary must at last will his own desteruction rooted as he is in the past he sets out to destroy –Diane Di Prima, Revolutionary Letter #12 What good is a book that does not even carry us beyond all books? –Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science 2 Table of Contents Introduction: The Impossibility of Foucaultian Commentary, The Exhaustion of Neoliberalism, and Critique ......................................................................................................... 5 0.0 Arriving at the Point of Departure .................................................................................................. 5 Chapter 1: The Problem of Archaeology: Anthropology ........................................................ 11 1.0 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 11 1.1 The Beginning of Philosophy ......................................................................................................... 12 1.2 The Vocabulary of Archaeology: Discourse, The Historical A Priori, and the Archive .......... 15 1.3 Anthropology as The Historical Problem of Archaeological Critique ...................................... 20 1.4. “Man” as a Historical A Priori ..................................................................................................... 23 Chapter 2: From the Being of Language to the Politics of Truth .......................................... 30 2.0. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 30 2.1. The Being of Language as a Void in Discourse ........................................................................... 31 2.2. Foucault’s Decision on the Being of Language ........................................................................... 39 Chapter 3: The Politicization of the Critique of Anthropology and the Politics of Truth ... 44 3.0 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 44 3.1 Politicizing the Anthropological Problematic: From Ideology to the Politics of Truth ........... 46 3.2 The Politicization of Truth ............................................................................................................. 50 3.3 The Possibility of the Politics of Truth ......................................................................................... 57 3.4 The Task of the Philosopher in the Politics of Truth .................................................................. 64 3.5 Philosophical Writing as a Relay between the Politics of Refusal and Critical Subjectivation ................................................................................................................................................................ 70 Chapter 4: Governmentality and the Limits of the Politics of Truth .................................... 77 4.0 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 77 4.1 From the Critique of Discipline and Biopower to Governmentality ......................................... 77 4.2 From the Critique of Governmentality to the Neoliberal Test of Critique ............................... 86 Chapter 5: Toward a Foucaultian Critique of Neoliberalism and Its First Paradox of Unnatural Naturalization ........................................................................................................... 88 5.0 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 88 5.1 Situating a Foucaultian Critique of Neoliberalism—“Why Not Marx?” .................................. 89 5.2 Situating the Critique of Neoliberalism in Foucault ................................................................... 96 5.3 The Birth of Biopolitics: An Overview ........................................................................................ 101 5.4 The Paradox of Unnatural Naturalization I: Of the Market Apparatus and its Norm, Competition ......................................................................................................................................... 103 5.5 The Paradox of Unnatural Naturalization II: The Rule of Law and Market Subjection in Hayek ................................................................................................................................................... 112 Chapter 6: On the Critique of the Neoliberal Paradox of Subjection by Desubjection and the Remnants of Anthropology ................................................................................................ 119 6.0. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 119 6.1. The Paradox of Subjection by Desubjection: Of Entrepreneurial Subjection ...................... 120 6.2. The Critique of Neoliberalism as a Late Anthropology ........................................................... 132 Chapter 7 (Conclusion): Insurrectionary Communism and “Cynicism” as Counter- Neoliberal Conducts.................................................................................................................. 141 7.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 141 7.1 The Neoliberal Closure of Civil Society and the Return to the War Hypothesis ................... 142 3 7.2 The Communist War Machine as a Counter-Conduct in Neoliberalism ................................ 148 7.3 The Other Life: Cynic Parrhēsia as an Ethics of Desubjection ................................................ 153 7.4 Cynic Life as Counter-Neoliberal Subjectivation ...................................................................... 157 Appendix: Is Foucault a Neoliberal?....................................................................................... 163 Abbreviations Used for the Texts of Michel Foucault ........................................................... 170 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 173 4 Introduction: The Impossibility of Foucaultian Commentary, The Exhaustion of Neoliberalism, and Critique The student has no interests. The student’s interests must be identified, declared, pursued, assessed, counseled, and credited. Debt produces interests. The student will be indebted. The student will be interested. Interest the students! The student can be calculated by her debts, can calculate her debts with her interests. She is in sight of credit, in sight of graduation, in sight of being a creditor, of being invested in education, a citizen.1 (Moten and Harney 2013, 67) 0.0 Arriving at the Point of Departure To write critically is to take up a position that one is always already in the act of leaving. The gesture of critique is not only a certain refusal of the given, but flight, abandonment, or desertion. As Foucault once said, “My problem, or the only theoretical work that I feel is possible for me, is leaving the trace, in the most intelligible outline possible, of the movements by which I am no longer at the place where I was earlier.” (GL, 76) But in truth, this dissertation is an attempt to arrive at something that has for some time now already been evident. The anonymous insurrectionary collective Tiqqun put it forward in 2004. Situated between September 11, 2001 and the global financial crisis of 2007 – 2008, they asserted an ethical-political starting point when they wrote: The “we” that speaks here is not a delimitable, isolated we, the we of a group. It is the we of a position. In these times, this position