A critical examination of Wendy Brown’s and Michel Foucault’s respective understandings of the political

Abstract

In her works on neoliberalism, Wendy Brown examines a process in which every sphere of human existence, including the political, has been subjected to neoliberal rationality and economization. Although her analysis is based on Michel Foucault’s investigation of neoliberalism, unlike Foucault, Brown’s main concern is the effect of this neoliberal transformation on democracy. Brown criticizes Foucault for failing to analyze the link between neoliberal rationality and democratic politics and claims that this failure derives from his formulation of the political which is largely limited to concepts like “sovereignty”. This thesis critically examines Brown’s and Foucault’s respective formulations of the political. Identifying a certain inconsistency regarding the political between Brown’s two main works on neoliberalism, it claims that this inconsistency derives from Brown’s desire to counter neoliberal attacks with a political subject, which leads to an ontological conception of the political. Subsequently analyzing Michel Foucault’s understanding of the political, it concurs that any fixed and generic formulation of the political would be antithetical to Foucault’s philosophy. Then it suggests that Foucault’s understanding of the political, reflecting a commitment to desubjugation and self transformation, might be of help for countering the attack of neoliberalism with a democratic politics and does not contradict with Brown’s philosophical and political endeavor.