Introduction: “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates” by Terry Flew
“Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates” by Terry Flew first appeared in Thesis Eleven in 2012 (Vol. 108, Issue 1, pp. 44–65), published by Sage. In this article, Flew re-evaluates Foucault’s 1978–79 Collège de France lectures—later published as The Birth of Biopolitics—to explore Foucault’s distinct approach to neoliberalism, not as a dominant ideology but as a historically contingent form of liberal governmental rationality. Flew emphasizes that Foucault’s reading of neoliberalism, particularly German ordoliberalism and the American Chicago School, is more analytical and less ideologically critical than the tone of many contemporary cultural and literary theorists. By situating neoliberalism within a genealogy of liberal government, Foucault shifts the terrain of critique from moral denunciation to an inquiry into how freedom is governed and produced. This reorientation has profound implications for literary and critical theory, especially as neoliberalism has become an all-purpose explanatory device in cultural studies. Flew critiques the tendency in some Marxist-Foucauldian syntheses (e.g., Dean, Brown, Miller) to retroactively attribute to Foucault their contemporary critiques of neoliberalism. Instead, Flew calls for a more nuanced engagement with neoliberalism’s institutional rationalities—raising questions about whether socialism can, or must, develop its own autonomous governmental rationality rather than relying on inherited ideological scripts. This makes the article a significant intervention in political theory, discourse analysis, and the theoretical debates shaping literary studies today.
Summary of “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates” by Terry Flew
🧠 1. Introduction: The Foucault-Neoliberalism Nexus
- Contextual Basis:
- Foucault’s 1978–79 lectures at the Collège de France were posthumously published as The Birth of Biopolitics.
- These lectures are now central to contemporary analyses of neoliberalism.
- Flew’s Central Concern:
- There is a gap between Foucault’s original treatment of neoliberalism and how it is interpreted by modern theorists.
- The term “neoliberalism” has become an overloaded and vague concept, often used ideologically rather than analytically.
🧩 2. Foucault’s Genealogical Method and Governmentality
- Governmentality:
- Refers to a form of governance that focuses on the “conduct of conduct”—how people are guided and self-regulate within systems of power.
- Genealogy over Ideology:
- Foucault doesn’t offer a moral or economic critique of neoliberalism.
- Instead, he investigates how neoliberal rationalities emerge, particularly how liberalism reconfigures the role of the state.
- Freedom as a Political Tool:
- Neoliberal governmentality doesn’t oppose the state; rather, it uses statecraft to produce market conditions and individual entrepreneurial behavior.
🌍 3. Key Differences: German Ordoliberalism vs. American Neoliberalism
- Ordoliberalism (Germany):
- Post-war rationality: The state must actively create and maintain the market order.
- It isn’t laissez-faire; instead, it’s a state-constructed market framework.
- Chicago School (U.S.):
- Extends economic logic into non-economic domains: crime, family, education, etc.
- Views individuals as “entrepreneurs of the self”, optimizing their behavior through choice and competition.
- Foucault’s Interpretation:
- Both models are not reduced to ideological doctrines but studied as rationalities of governance.
📚 4. Contemporary Theoretical Appropriations of Foucault
- Flew’s Critique:
- Many critical theorists (e.g., Wendy Brown, Nikolas Rose) use Foucault to moralize or totalize neoliberalism.
- These scholars retrofit their own ideological critiques into Foucault’s analytics of power.
- Conceptual Inflation of “Neoliberalism”:
- The term is now used ubiquitously and uncritically to explain everything from education reform to dating culture.
- It risks becoming “the theory of everything”, which dilutes its analytical value.
🧾 5. Literary and Cultural Theory: Overreliance on Neoliberalism as Master Concept
- Foucault vs. Cultural Theory:
- Foucault avoided totalizing theories—his focus was always local, specific, and contingent.
- Literary theory, especially post-structuralist and Marxist-influenced strands, tends to unify neoliberalism as a global system.
- Problem of Moralism:
- Theorists sometimes use neoliberalism as a moral whipping post, losing sight of how it actually operates institutionally.
🧱 6. Implications for Political Thought and Left Strategy
- A New Socialist Rationality?:
- Flew draws attention to Foucault’s idea that the Left must develop its own governmental rationality, not just critique the Right.
- Socialism must be reimagined not just as anti-capitalism, but as a practical mode of governing freedom and life.
- Practical Political Engagement:
- Flew calls for a move away from cultural pessimism and symbolic politics toward a program of rational social governance.
📌 7. Conclusion: Reclaiming Foucault’s Analytical Nuance
- Reframing the Debate:
- Instead of using neoliberalism as a scapegoat, scholars should focus on how it structures action and subjectivity.
- Flew’s Core Argument:
- Foucault provides tools to understand neoliberalism without moralizing it.
- Academic work must preserve Foucault’s method, not co-opt it for ideological ends.
✅ Key Takeaways
- Foucault’s approach to neoliberalism is diagnostic, not denunciatory.
- Neoliberalism is better understood as a rationality of governance, not a monolithic ideology.
- Many current theoretical treatments risk flattening Foucault’s insights by misusing neoliberalism as a catch-all critique.
- The Left must develop constructive alternatives rather than simply critique.
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates” by Terry Flew
| 🏷️ Term | 📘 Definition / Explanation | 🔍 In-text Citation (Flew, 2012) |
| Governmentality 🏛️ | A form of governance focusing on “the conduct of conduct,” i.e., how individuals and populations are regulated through institutions, practices, and norms. | “Foucault’s distinctive contribution… was to introduce the concept of ‘governmentality’” (p. 45) |
| Biopolitics 🧬 | A modern form of power concerned with managing life processes of populations — birth, health, mortality — often tied to regulatory institutions and state mechanisms. | “The concern with biopolitics… was intimately connected to neoliberal governmentality” (p. 45) |
| Neoliberalism 💹 | A historically specific political rationality emphasizing competition, individual responsibility, and the market as the primary site of governance. | “Neoliberalism should be understood not as an ideology… but as a political rationality” (p. 46) |
| Rationality of Government 🧩 | Systematic forms of reasoning about how to organize governance. Neoliberalism, in this sense, is a rationality that extends economic logic to all aspects of life. | “Neoliberalism represents a rationality of government…” (p. 48) |
| Entrepreneur of the Self 🎯 | A subject who governs themselves using economic logic: maximizing personal utility, taking responsibility, and viewing life choices as investments. | “Individuals are seen as entrepreneurs of themselves…” (p. 49) |
| Ordoliberalism 🧱 | A German neoliberal school focused on using strong state frameworks to ensure market competition, contrasting laissez-faire approaches. | “German ordoliberalism… sought to create a strong regulatory framework for markets” (p. 50) |
| State-Crafted Market 🏛️➕💹 | The market as a constructed domain, not a natural one — requiring state intervention to sustain competition and prevent monopolies. | “The market must be actively constructed… through political authority” (p. 50) |
| Chicago School Economics 💼 | A U.S. neoliberal tradition emphasizing free markets and applying economic reasoning to all social domains (crime, family, education). | “Foucault considered the American Chicago School as extending market logic beyond economics” (p. 51) |
| Critique vs. Diagnosis 📏 | Foucault preferred diagnosing how forms of power operate rather than offering moral or ideological critiques; Flew warns against moralizing neoliberalism. | “Foucault’s method was… not to condemn neoliberalism… but to diagnose its rationality” (p. 54) |
| Genealogy 🔄 | Foucault’s method of tracing the historical development of ideas and institutions without assuming linear or universal truths. | “Foucault’s genealogical method… focuses on the contingent formation of governmental rationalities” (p. 47) |
| Counter-Conduct 🧱🔄 | Forms of resistance to governmentality — not pure opposition, but ways of “conducting oneself differently” within power structures. | “The concept of counter-conduct… emerges as part of the tension within governmentality” (p. 55) |
| Ideological Inflation 🚫📢 | The tendency in critical theory to overuse “neoliberalism” as a catch-all explanatory framework, leading to analytical vagueness. | “There is a tendency to use neoliberalism as an all-purpose critique…” (p. 52) |
| Economic Subjectivity ⚖️📊 | Individuals internalizing market logic — seeing themselves as economic agents and modeling their identity on optimization, risk, and choice. | “Neoliberalism… shapes how subjects think of themselves…” (p. 49) |
Contribution of “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates” by Terry Flew to Literary Theory/Theories
🔍✖️ Theoretical Terms and Discourse Theory
Flew’s article strongly aligns with poststructuralist commitments by emphasizing Michel Foucault’s genealogical, non-essentialist method. He reinforces that Foucault approached neoliberalism not as a fixed ideological system, but as a discursively produced form of political reason. This has implications for literary theory, which often engages with power, language, and meaning as constructed rather than inherent.
“Foucault was not offering a critique of neoliberalism in terms of ideological error, or of inconsistency with a set of values or political principles. Rather, he was undertaking a genealogy of governmental rationalities” (Flew, 2012, p. 46).
By underscoring this, Flew calls literary theorists back to Foucault’s careful historicism and away from reductive ideological totalizations.
🧩📘 Foucauldian Literary Criticism
Flew critiques how many cultural theorists have co-opted Foucault’s ideas into broader ideological critiques, often moralizing neoliberalism in ways Foucault never intended. He contributes to Foucauldian literary theory by advocating a return to the diagnostic ethos of Foucault’s method.
“There has been a tendency within the cultural and literary theory literature to conflate neoliberalism with globalization, postmodernism or contemporary capitalism, and to view it as a form of ideology or cultural hegemony” (p. 52).
He warns that such conflations obscure Foucault’s original intention to study the specificity of how neoliberal reason governs subjects and spaces, urging literary critics to retain this precision.
⚒️📢 Ideology Critique and Marxist Literary Theory
Flew’s intervention challenges Marxist-influenced literary theorists who have absorbed neoliberalism into the apparatus of class critique. He finds this problematic, because it universalizes neoliberalism as an ideology instead of understanding it as a contingent political rationality.
“There is a tendency in contemporary theory to inflate the concept of neoliberalism to account for almost all developments in the contemporary world… making it difficult to identify what is specific about neoliberalism as a form of political rationality” (p. 52).
This has implications for how literature is analyzed in terms of class and ideology: Flew suggests such analysis needs to attend to the micro-level operations of power, not only macro-economic structures.
🎯⚖️ Subjectivity in Literary and Cultural Theory
One of Flew’s most direct contributions to literary theory lies in how he emphasizes Foucault’s concept of the “entrepreneur of the self”—a mode of subjectivity formed through neoliberal discourses. This is vital for literary analysis, where characters and narratives can be read through the lens of how economic rationalities shape identity.
“Neoliberalism encourages individuals to relate to themselves as entrepreneurs of themselves, and to see their lives in terms of investment, cost–benefit calculation and performance outcomes” (p. 49).
This offers a powerful tool for interpreting contemporary literary texts, particularly those dealing with themes of labor, education, self-help, or identity in capitalist societies.
🏛️📝 Institutional Critique and Literary Academia
Flew turns a critical eye toward the practices of literary and cultural theory itself, suggesting that the academy often engages in symbolic forms of critique against neoliberalism without offering constructive alternatives. This has consequences for the institutional framing of literary studies.
“The challenge… is whether socialism can become an art of government… rather than simply existing in critique of existing forms of governmentality” (p. 56).
Flew’s challenge encourages literary theorists to consider how their field might not only critique power but also participate in imagining and structuring alternative social orders.
📚🗳️ Rethinking Literary Political Engagement
Finally, Flew’s work invites literary theorists to move beyond negative critique toward constructive political imaginaries. Literature, in this framing, becomes not merely a site of resistance but a space to reimagine the governance of freedom, life, and possibility.
“Critique alone is insufficient… there is a need to think how freedom can be governed differently” (p. 56).
Rather than invoking neoliberalism as a force to be endlessly opposed, Flew urges scholars to ask: what alternative forms of governance, subjectivity, and political engagement can literary theory help articulate?
Examples of Critiques Through “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates” by Terry Flew
| 📘 Novel | 🧠 Foucauldian-Neoliberal Critique via Flew |
| Kazuo Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go 🧬🎯 | The novel’s clone protagonists are engineered for organ harvesting, but internalize their fates without resistance. Through Flew’s lens, this reflects neoliberal biopolitics and the entrepreneurial subject, where human life is rendered biological capital, and subjects self-govern by quietly accepting commodified existence. As Flew writes: “Neoliberalism encourages individuals to relate to themselves as entrepreneurs of themselves…” (p. 49). |
| Dave Eggers – The Circle 💼🎯📏 | This novel critiques Silicon Valley techno-corporate culture as a manifestation of Chicago School neoliberalism, where personal lives are transformed into data-driven performance metrics. Mae, the protagonist, self-disciplines and optimizes her behavior in line with digital corporate norms. Flew’s emphasis on diagnosing neoliberal subjectivity, rather than simply opposing it, allows deeper insight into Mae’s complicity: “Critique alone is insufficient…” (p. 56). |
| Ian McEwan – Saturday 🧩🏛️🧱 | McEwan’s neurosurgeon protagonist embodies liberal individualism and governmental rationality, viewing politics through the lens of risk, security, and self-control. The novel mirrors Flew’s discussion of how ordoliberalism uses the state to maintain a regulated order for elite freedom: “Ordoliberalism sought to create a strong regulatory framework for markets” (p. 50). The protagonist’s politics reflect a belief in “managed freedom.” |
| Zadie Smith – NW 🎯⚖️🧱🔄 | Smith’s London novel explores post-welfare urban life, where characters experience fragmented subjectivities and are urged to self-manage amidst precarity. Leah, Natalie, and Felix all encounter neoliberal counter-conduct: resistance through failure, withdrawal, or alternate social logics. Flew’s emphasis on subjectivity under neoliberal governmentality opens readings of these characters as navigating not ideology, but regulatory power: “Subjects are governed through a range of rationalities…” (p. 45). |
Criticism Against “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates” by Terry Flew
⚒️ 1. Underplaying the Structural Power of Capitalism
Criticism:
Flew downplays material and structural analyses of neoliberalism—particularly from a Marxist perspective—in favor of a narrowly Foucauldian “governmentality” approach.
- Critics argue that Flew’s reading avoids confronting the economic violence, dispossession, and exploitation that neoliberalism imposes on global and racialized populations.
- While Flew warns against “inflationary uses” of the term neoliberalism, his alternative flattens the political stakes by treating it too neutrally—as merely a “rationality.”
Example critique:
Scholars such as David Harvey or Nancy Fraser may argue that Flew’s focus on “governmentality” evacuates class analysis and treats neoliberalism more as a discourse than a political-economic system with material consequences.
🧩 2. Over-Defensive of Foucault’s Neutrality
Criticism:
Flew insists on Foucault’s neutrality or non-normative stance toward neoliberalism, but this might be overstated. Foucault’s tone in The Birth of Biopolitics is complex and at times ambiguous—perhaps even open to strategic sympathy—but not without critique.
- Some scholars suggest that Flew’s defense of Foucault leads to an uncritical idealization of Foucault’s methodological detachment.
- Others propose that Foucault’s later work includes implied critiques of neoliberalism’s implications for ethics, democracy, and subjectivity.
Related view:
“Flew’s claim that Foucault was simply ‘diagnosing’ rather than critiquing neoliberalism risks exonerating Foucault from his own political responsibility as a thinker engaging with real systems of domination.”
🗣️ 3. Mischaracterizing Cultural Theory’s Use of Neoliberalism
Criticism:
Flew argues that cultural and literary theorists indiscriminately use neoliberalism as an all-purpose critique. However, this claim itself risks straw-manning a rich field of scholarship.
- Many theorists (e.g. Wendy Brown, Lauren Berlant, Lisa Duggan) have developed nuanced and historically grounded accounts of neoliberalism’s impact on gender, race, affect, and culture.
- To accuse them of “conceptual inflation” without engaging their specific arguments may be dismissive.
In response:
One might say Flew is “calling out” the theoretical field without fully engaging with its complexity or variety, especially feminist, postcolonial, and queer interpretations of neoliberalism.
🧱 4. Neglect of Global and Postcolonial Dimensions
Criticism:
Flew’s analysis is largely centered on Western Europe and North America (Germany, France, Chicago School), following Foucault’s own limitations. He does not account for how neoliberalism functions globally, especially in the Global South.
- There is no serious engagement with how neoliberal rationalities operate through postcolonial governance, IMF/World Bank reforms, or structural adjustment programs.
- This risks reinforcing a Eurocentric model of power while ignoring the racialized and colonial genealogy of neoliberal violence.
Scholarly angle:
Postcolonial theorists like Achille Mbembe or Aihwa Ong could critique Flew for continuing a Western-centric framework that erases colonial continuities in neoliberal rule.
📏 5. Absence of Ethical and Political Alternatives
Criticism:
Although Flew criticizes the Left for offering only critique without proposing a “new art of government,” he fails to elaborate what this alternative might look like.
- His call for the Left to develop its own rationality of government sounds promising, but remains vague and abstract.
- It is unclear whether Flew supports social democracy, market socialism, radical democracy, or another vision.
Implication:
Critics might say that Flew positions himself as a centrist referee, identifying faults in others’ arguments without clearly taking a stance of his own.
🎭 6. Theoretical Conservatism and Minimization of Resistance
Criticism:
Flew tends to minimize the potential for counter-conduct, resistance, or radical subjectivities in contemporary culture and literature.
- By focusing on rationalities of governance, he may sideline more messy, affective, or artistic forms of refusal, which literary theorists find central.
- His caution toward moral critique might suppress the transformative or insurgent power of literary and cultural forms.
Interpretation:
From this view, Flew’s approach seems more aligned with institutional critique and policy-oriented theory, and less with radical or imaginative praxis.
Representative Quotations from “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates” by Terry Flew with Explanation
| Quotation | Page | Explanation |
| “Neo-liberalism has become one of the boom concepts of our time.” | 44 | This opening statement highlights the explosive growth in the use of the term “neo-liberalism” in academic discourse, particularly in the 2000s. Flew notes its transformation from a specific economic concept to a broad, often vague, critique of various social, cultural, and political phenomena, setting the stage for examining Foucault’s more nuanced historical approach. |
| “Foucault did not understand neo-liberalism as a dominant ideology in these lectures, but rather as marking a point of inflection in the historical evolution of liberal political philosophies of government.” | 44 | Flew emphasizes that Foucault’s analysis in The Birth of Biopolitics treats neo-liberalism as a shift within liberal governmentality, not as a monolithic ideology. This contrasts with later critics who often portray it as a hegemonic force, highlighting Foucault’s focus on its historical and governmental specificity. |
| “The term is effectively used in different ways, such that its appearance in any given article offers little clue as to what it actually means.” | 45 | Quoting Boas and Gans-Morse, Flew critiques the ambiguous and varied applications of “neo-liberalism” in academic literature. This underscores the need for a clearer understanding, which Foucault’s lectures provide by grounding neo-liberalism in specific governmental practices rather than as a catch-all term. |
| “Neo-liberalism is not Adam Smith; neo-liberalism is not market society; neo-liberalism is not the Gulag on the insidious scale of capitalism.” | 47 (quoting Foucault 2008: 131) | Foucault rejects simplistic reductions of neo-liberalism to classical liberalism or oppressive capitalist structures. Flew uses this to illustrate Foucault’s effort to distinguish neo-liberalism as a distinct governmental rationality, challenging Marxist interpretations that conflate it with traditional capitalism. |
| “The market constitutes a site of veridiction . . . for governmental practice.” | 50 (quoting Foucault 2008: 32) | This quote captures Foucault’s concept of the market as a mechanism for assessing the truth or efficacy of governmental actions in liberal thought. Flew highlights how this shift from raison d’état to market-based truth marks a key feature of liberal and neo-liberal governmentality. |
| “The new art of government appears as the management of freedom . . . Liberalism must produce freedom, but this very act entails the establishment of limitations, controls, forms of coercion, and obligations relying on threats.” | 51 (quoting Foucault 2008: 63–4) | Foucault’s paradox of liberalism is central here: it requires freedom to function but must also produce and regulate it, leading to new forms of control. Flew uses this to show how neo-liberalism extends this dynamic, redefining freedom through market competition and enterprise. |
| “The society regulated by reference to the market that the neo-liberals are thinking about is . . . an enterprise society.” | 56 (quoting Foucault 2008: 147) | This quotation reflects Foucault’s analysis of neo-liberalism’s shift from a society based on commodity exchange to one driven by competition and enterprise. Flew uses it to illustrate how neo-liberalism reorients social relations around the model of the entrepreneur, a key departure from classical liberalism. |
| “American neo-liberalism . . . sought ‘the generalisation of the economic form of the market . . . throughout the social body’.” | 58 (quoting Foucault 2008: 243) | Flew highlights Foucault’s observation that American neo-liberalism, unlike German ordoliberalism, applies market principles to all aspects of social life, including non-economic domains like crime and family. This radical extension underscores its distinctiveness and influence. |
| “Foucault is quite explicit about the political stake entailed in the two problematics . . . we have a capitalism that can be subject to significant economic-institutional transformations.” | 60 (quoting Foucault 2008: 164–5) | This quote contrasts the Marxist view of capitalism’s singular logic with the Weberian perspective adopted by ordoliberals and Foucault, which sees capitalism as adaptable through institutional reforms. Flew uses this to argue for Foucault’s alignment with comparative political economy over Marxist critiques. |
| “What would really be the governmentality appropriate to socialism? . . . It must be invented.” | 59 (quoting Foucault 2008: 94) | Foucault’s challenge to socialism’s lack of a distinct governmental rationality is a key point for Flew. It underscores Foucault’s critique of socialism’s reliance on textual conformity and his call for innovative governmental practices, contrasting with neo-liberalism’s adaptability. |
Suggested Readings: “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates” by Terry Flew
- Flew, Terry. “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates.” Thesis Eleven 108.1 (2012): 44-65.
- Tierney, Thomas F. “Toward an Affirmative Biopolitics.” Sociological Theory, vol. 34, no. 4, 2016, pp. 358–81. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26382876. Accessed 30 July 2025.
