Critique, Government, and Ways of Life: Genealogy and Resistance in Contemporary Neoliberal Rationalities

Abstract

This article analyzes the contemporary convergence between neoliberalism and neoconservatism through the lens of Foucault’s notion of critique, with the aim of examining the historical conditions that define governable and livable forms of life. First, it examines how current reconfigurations of neoliberalism are shifting the individualizing model of homo economicus toward a mandate of family responsibility formulated by Gary Becker in terms of efficiency. Drawing on the work of Melinda Cooper, the article explores the articulation between the logic of human capital, family self-responsibility, and the moral technologies of government that, centered on the family, hierarchize and legitimize certain forms of existence. This analysis allows us to examine how neoliberal and neoconservative rationalities redefine the conditions of intelligibility and governance of lives. In a second phase, the Foucauldian notion of critique is reconstructed from its genealogical roots and its articulation with governmentality, showing how the critical attitude takes shape as a practice of reflective insubordination in the face of dynamics that erode political frameworks marked by the prevalence of neoconservative practices. Finally, the proposal is to understand criticism not only as a form of disengagement or radical negation, but also as an intervention in the regimes of truth that organize ways of life, and as practices of insubordination aimed at opening up possibilities for other ways of being.