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ContemporaryAdvancedLectures

The Birth of Biopolitics

Michel Foucault

Governmentality / neoliberalism

It is a key source for critical analysis of neoliberalism and the genealogy of governmental power.

Synopsis

Lectures analyzing liberalism and neoliberalism as arts of governing through markets, competition, and the management of populations.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

Modern liberal government rules less by command than by shaping the conditions in which free, self-interested subjects act.

It reveals freedom itself as a technique of governance, exercised through markets rather than against them.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty.

Reading note

Read it as lecture transcripts, more exploratory and provisional than a finished, systematic book.

Best paired with

Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

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