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Course materials 2015/16


Genealogy and Critique of Neoliberalism: Foucault and Bataille

Professor Miguel Beistegui, Room S2.56

email: M.J.Beistegui@warwick.ac.uk

Office Hour Term 1: Tuesday 2-3, or by appointment




The immediate context of this module is the current financial and economic crisis, the origins of which we hope to identify and engage with critically by reading works by M. Foucault and Georges Bataille, two leading figures of 20th century French philosophy who, amongst other things, sought to address the problem of political economy from a position that was neither liberal nor marxist. The more general context is that of the dominant forms of subjectivity and the processes of subjectivation under which we live today, and the possibility of creating alternatives.


 


The module will consist of one lecture (2 hours) and one seminar (one hour). Participation to both is compulsory.


 


Aims of the Module:


  • to introduce students to the thought of Foucault’s so-called middle period, and to his genealogical method, and to Bataille’s own political economy.

  • to come to an understanding of neoliberalism as the socio-economic paradigm defining our political subjectivity via a close reading of Michel Foucault's 1979 lectures at the Collège de France, The birth of Biopolitics.

  • to develop a genealogical critique of neoliberalism.

  • to suggest alternative modes of subjectivation and other conceptions of the self by looking at key passages from Georges Bataille’s “The Notion of Expenditure” (in Visions of Excess) and The Accursed Share, Volume 3, translated by Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1989).


 


Learning Outcomes:


  • a new set of analytical skills, as informed by Foucault’s genealogical method, and a renewed understanding of what it means to think philosophically;

  • an ability to understand, process and engage with information, data and theories from political and economic theory from a distinctly philosophical perspective: an ability to engage critically with the current economic and political situation.


 


Assessment:


See http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/undergraduate/modules/PH333/


 


Bibliography:


 


Works by Foucault:


Il faut défendre la société. Cours au Collège de France” (1976). Edited by Alessandro Fontana and Mauro Bertani (Hautes Etudes/Gallimard/Seuil, 1997). Translated by David Macey as “Society must be defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France (London: Penguin Books, 2003).


 Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France (1977-1978). Edited by Michel Senellart (Hautes Etudes/Gallimard/Seuil, 2004). Translated by Graham Burchell as Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).


Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France, 1978-1979. Edited by Michel Senellart (Hautes Etudes/Gallimard/Seuil, 2004). Translated by Graham Burchell as The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).


“Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire”(1971) and “Qu’est-ce que les lumières?” (1984) in Dits et écrits II, 1970-1975, and Dits et écrits IV, 1975-1979, edited by Daniel Defert and François Lagrange (Paris, Gallimard, 1994). Translated as “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” and “What is Enlightenment?” in The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow (London: Penguin Books, 1984).


“Sur les façons d’écrire l’histoire” (1967) and “Qui êtes-vous, professeur Foucault?” (1967) in Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits I, 1954-1969, edited by Daniel Defert and François Lagrange (Paris, Gallimard, 1994). Translated as “On the Ways of Writing History” in Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, edited by Paul Rabinow, Vol. 2: Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, edited by James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1998), 279-296; “Who are you, Professor Foucault?” in Jeremy Carrette, Religion and Culture: Michel Foucault (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 87-104.


“The Subject and Power” (1982) in R. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (eds), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 208-226.


 


Works by Bataille:


“The Notion of Expenditure” in Visions of Excess, trans. Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1985), 116-129.


La Part maudite, Volume I (La Consumation) and La limite de l'utile [fragments d'une version abandonnée de La Part maudite] in Œuvres complètes, Volume VII (Paris: Gallimard, 1976)


 La Part Maudite, Volume III (La Souveraineté) in Œuvres complètes, Volume VIII (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). Translated by Robert Hurley as The Accursed Share, Volume 3 (Sovereignty) (New York: Zone Books, 1991).


 


Works on Foucault:


a. General:

The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon. Edited by Leonard Lawlor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Gutting, Gary. The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Contains a variety of essays on various key topics, periods and aspects of Foucault’s work.


Rudi Visker, Michel Foucault: Genealogy as Critique, translated by Chris Turner (London: Verso, 1995). On Foucault’s genealogical method.


 


b. On liberalism and neoliberalism:


Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (eds.). Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neoliberalism and Rationalities of Government. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.


Graham Burchell, Collin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds). The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991.


Castro-Gómez, Santiago. Historia de la gubernamentalidad. Razón de estado, liberalismo y neoliberalismo en Michel Foucault. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores, 2010.


Foucault Studies, No 6, February 2009: Special Issue on The Birth of Biopolitics, with articles by Ute Tellmann, “Foucault and the Invisible Economy,” 5-24; Jason Read, “A Genealogy of Homo Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity,” 25-36; Trent H. Hamann, “Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics,” 37-59.


Dumm L., Thomas. Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002.


Gertenbach, Lars. Die Kultivierung des Marktes. Foucault und die Gouvernementalität des Neoliberalismus. Berlin: Parodos, 2008.


Lemke, Thomas. Eine Kritik der Politischen Vernunft. Foucaults Analyse der modernen Gouvernementalität. Hamburg: Argument Verlag, 1997.


Lemm, Vanessa (ed.). Michel Foucault: neoliberalismo y biopolítica. Santiago: Universidad Diego Portales, 2010.


----------. Gouvernementalität und Biopolitik. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007.


Lemm, Vanessa and Vatter, Miguel (eds.), The Government of Life: Foucault, Biopolitics, and Neoliberalism. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.


 


Web resources:


The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/#Bib; good general introduction and useful bibliography.


 http://www.protevi.com/john/: John Protevi’s very useful website, which contains outlines of a number of Foucault’s lecture courses, as well as lecture notes and papers on Foucault.


 www.michel-foucault.com, a site devoted to Foucault’s work, created and regularly updated by Clare O’Farrel.


 www.materialifoucaultiani.org: “Materiali Foucaultiani” is an Italian site with information, articles and interviews on Foucault in Italian, French and English.


 


Works in Political Economy:


A. Physiocrats:


Quesnay, Tableau économique (1758); articles “Fermiers” and “Grains” from the Encyclopédie (1756); Le Trosne, De l’ordre social (1777).


 


B. Liberalism:


J. Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, in Richard Aschcraft (ed.), The Two Treatises of Civil Government (London: Routledge, 1989).


D. Hume, “That Politics may be Reduced to a Science,” “Of the First Principles of Government,” “Of the Origin of Government,” “Of Commerce,” “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” “Of the Original Contract,” in Selected Essays, edited by Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar (Oxford: Oxfor University Press, 1996).


James Steuart, An Inquiry into The Principles of Political Economy: Being and Essay on the Science of Domestic Policy in Free Nations. London, printed for A. Millar and T. Cadell, 1767.


A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982).


The Wealth of Nations (London: Penguin Classics, 1999)


J. Bentham, Anarchical Fallacies; Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Manual of Political Economy, in Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings.


Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House, in Miran Bozovic (ed.), The Panopticon Writings (London: Verso, 1995)


J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, edited by Jonathan Riley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)


 Utilitarianism, edited by Roger Crisp (Oxford: Oxford University Press).


 


C. Neoliberalism:


1. Austrian School:


L. von Mises, Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen über den Sozialismus (Jena: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1922). Translated by J. Kahane as Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951)


 Liberalismus (Gustave Fischer Verlag, 1927). Translated by Ralph Raico as Liberalism: In The Classical Tradition (San Francisco: Cobden Press, 1985)


F. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944) (London: Routledge, 2008)


 Individualism and Economic Order (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948)


 The Constitution of Liberty (1960) (London: Routledge, 2006)


2. Chicago School:


G. Becker, Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special reference to Education. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 3rd ed., 1993.


The Economic Approach to Human Behavior. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971.


A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.


“Altrusim, egoism and genetic fitness: Economics and sociobiology,” Journal of Economic Literature 14 (1976): 817-826


The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976)


M. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002; 1st ed., 1962)


Essays in Positive Economics, The University of Chicago Press, 1953.


Why Government is the Problem (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press Publication, 1993).


T. Schultz, Investment in Human Capital: The Role of Education and of Research, New York: Free Press, 1971.


 Human Resources (Human Capital: Policy Issues and Research Opportunities). New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1972.


(ed.), Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974


 


D. Marxism:


Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, edited and introduced by C. J. Arthur (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977).


G. Lukács, “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” in History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: Merlin, 1990).


T. Adorno, “Ideology” in Aspects of Sociology


Adorno and Horkheimer, “The Genesis of Stupidity” in Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (London: Verso, 1997), 256-58


 


E. History of Economics, Economics:


J. Schumpeter, A History of Economic Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954)


Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Time [1944] (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001)


Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments in Favour of Capitalism before its Triumph. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.


Philip Mirowski, More Heat than Light. Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature’s Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)


----- and Dieter Plehwe, eds., The Road from Mont Pélerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009)


Aranzadi del Cerro, Javier, Liberalism Against Liberalism: Theoretical Analysis Of The Works Of Ludwig Von Mises And Gary Becker. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.


David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Historical approach, and brief. Useful but up to a point, in that not philosophical.


P. Miller and N. Rose, Governing the Present. Administering Economic, Social and Personal Life (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008).


G. Agamben, Il Regno e la Gloria. Homo Sacer, II, 2 (Milano: Neri Pozza Editore, 2007). On the religious and theological sources of key concepts in political economy, especially government, order, and economics.


C. Laval, L’homme économique: Essai sur les racines du néolibéralisme (Paris: Gallimard, 2007)


P. Dardot and C. Laval, La nouvelle raison du monde. Essai sur la société néolibérale (Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2009)


B. Latour and V. A. Lépinay, L’économie, science des intérêts passionnés. Introduction à l’anthropologie économique de Gabriel Tarde (Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2008).


B. Stiegler, Pour une nouvelle critique de l’économie politique (Paris: Galilée, 2009).


Jon Elster, Le désintéressement. Traité critique de l’économie politique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2009).


David Graeber, Debt: The First Five Thousand Years. New York: Melville House, 2011.


Harcourt, Bernard E., The Illusion of Free Markets. Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.


 


 


Programme of lectures and seminars:


Week 1:


Lecture: Introduction to the Module as a Whole. Brief biography of Foucault and introduction to his thought.


 


Week 2:


Seminar: What are philosophers for?


Reading: I. Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” (1784), in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, translated and edited by Mary J. Gregor, 1996; M. Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in The Foucault Reader, edited by P. Rabinow.


Lecture: The Genealogy of Liberalism


Reading: M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 10 January + 17 January 1979; also excerpts from Security, Territory, Population (especially 1 Feb. 1978) and “Society must be defended”


 


Week 3:


Seminar: The Birth of Biopolitics


Reading: “Society must be defended,” lecture of 17 March 1976; Security, Territory, Population, lectures of 11 January 1978, 25 January and 1 February 1978


Lecture: The Genealogy of Liberalism (cont.)


Reading: M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 24 January 1979


 


Week 4:


Seminar: Foucault and History


Reading: M. Foucault, “On the Ways of Writing History” (1967) and “Who are you, Professor Foucault?” (1967).


Lecture: The Genealogy of Neoliberalism (with emphasis on Mises and Hayek)


Reading: The Birth of Biopolitics, 31 January + 7 February 1979


 


Week 5:


Seminar: Foucault and History (cont.)


Reading: M. Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”


Lecture: The Genealogy of Neoliberalism (cont., with emphasis on Chicago School)


Reading: M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 14 + 21 March 1979


 


Week 6: Reading Week


 


Week 7:


Seminar: The Mechanics of Power


Reading: M. Foucault, “The Subject and Power” in R. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow (eds), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics


Lecture: The Genealogy of Neoliberalism (cont.) and the Question of (Self-)


Governmentality


Reading: The Birth of Biopolitics, 28 March + 4 April 1979


 


Week 8:


Seminar: Bataille’s Political Economy


Reading: G. Bataille, “The Notion of Expenditure” in Visions of Excess


Lecture: “The Limit of Utility:” Introducing Bataille’s Project


 


Week 9:


Seminar: Bataille’s Political Economy


Reading: G. Bataille, The Accursed Share, Volume 3 (Sovereignty), Part One, Chapter 1 (p. 247-261)


Lecture: Reviving Sovereignty


Reading: G. Bataille, The Accursed Share, Volume 3 (Sovereignty)


 


Week 10:


Seminar: Bataille on Sovereignty


Reading: G. Bataille, The Accursed Share, Volume 3 (Sovereignty), Part One, Chapters 3 and 4 (p. 225-260).


Lecture: General Conclusion and Discussion