Governing the resilience of neoliberalism through biopolitics.

Luca Mavelli

doi:10.1177/1354066116676321

Abstract

Neoliberalism is widely regarded as the main culprit for the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. However, despite this abysmal failure, neoliberalism has not merely survived the crisis, but actually ‘thrived’. How is it possible to account for the resilience of neoliberalism? Existing scholarship has answered this question either by focusing on the distinctive qualities of neoliberalism (such as adaptability, internal coherence and capacity to incorporate dissent) or on the biopolitical capacity of neoliberalism to produce resilient subjects. This article adopts a different perspective. Drawing on and partially challenging the perspective of Michel Foucault, I argue that neoliberalism and biopolitics should be considered two complementary governmental rationalities, and that biopolitical rationalities contribute to governing the uncertainties and risks stemming from the neoliberalization of life. Biopolitics, in other words, plays a key role in governing the resilience of neoliberalism. Through this conceptual lens, the article explores how biopolitical rationalities of care have been deployed to govern the neoliberal crisis of the Greek sovereign debt, which threatened the stability of the European banking system and, I shall argue, the neoliberal life, wealth and well-being of the European population. The article discusses how biopolitical racism is an essential component of the biopolitical governance of neoliberalism. Biopolitical racism displaces the sources of risk, dispossession and inequality from the neoliberal regime to ‘inferior’ populations, whose lack of compliance with neoliberal dictates is converted into a threat to our neoliberal survival. This threat deserves punishment and authorizes further dynamics of neoliberal dispossession.

Highlights

It has been widely observed that the 2007/2008 global financial crisis engendered the expectation of a shift towards a ‘post-neoliberal regime’ that failed to materialize (Konings, 2016: 268; see Crouch, 2011; Dean, 2014; Harvey, 2011; Peck, 2010; Peck et al, 2010; Schmidt and Thatcher, 2013)
This article has explored the question of the resilience of neoliberalism
It has argued that neoliberalism and biopolitics should be considered two complementary and mutually reinforcing, but analytically distinct, governmental rationalities, and that biopolitical rationalities of care and racism play a crucial role in governing the uncertainty and risk stemming from the neoliberalization of life and neoliberalism’s inclination to produce crises

Summary

Introduction

It has been widely observed that the 2007/2008 global financial crisis engendered the expectation of a shift towards a ‘post-neoliberal regime’ that failed to materialize (Konings, 2016: 268; see Crouch, 2011; Dean, 2014; Harvey, 2011; Peck, 2010; Peck et al, 2010; Schmidt and Thatcher, 2013). Irrespective of how neoliberalism is understood — as a political philosophy, governmental rationality, economic theory or regime of subjectification (Dean, 2014: 151) — its hegemony seems unchallenged Scholars have questioned this apparent anomaly; after all, all major financial crises, such as the 1930s’ Great Depression and the 1970s’ crisis of Keynesianism, have been ‘turning points for economic shifts and public policies’ (Bohle and Greskovits, 2015: 1). Even the proponents of the idea of neoliberalism as a crisis-driven mode of governance consider that the magnitude and scale of the 2007/2008 global financial crisis, which has triggered the worst recession since the Great Depression, has been such that it would not have been unreasonable to expect a more substantial challenge to the neoliberal paradigm

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Conclusion