Practices of Freedom into Neoliberal Governmentality: Some Notes for the Exercise of the Disobediences

Abstract

We undertake a study on the ongoing processes of subjectivation under the label of what is known as ‘neoliberal governmentality’, following Foucault’s works corresponding to the end of the ‘70s. We work genealogically, from the constitution of the modern individual as a holder of rights, to demonstrate that what it works as a guarantee of security is at the same time what certifies obedience, figurated trough the management of the public and private use of reason. We can also find this paradox in the entrepreneurial drift of neoliberalism, through the performance/pleasure apparatus. This work allows us to interrogate the current relationships between subject, power and truth, starting from an analysis of the notion of practices of freedom —which was enunciated by Foucault at the end of the ’80s— as practices of resistance located beyond modern liberties.