Foucault’s writings on the concept of homo economicus, or economic man, a concept
which appeared as early as 1776 in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (Lemke, 2001;
Schneider, 2010) provides a focused body of writings from which to interrogate the
concept of neoliberalism in this paper. Foucault used the term homo economicus in a
double sense. Firstly, he referred to it as a grid of rationality for social interaction and the conduct of society. On such a grid, the market, competition and entrepreneurship featured as coordinate points. This grid became ‘a principle of decipherment of social relationships and individual behaviour’ (Foucault, 2004, p. 243). For example, in relation to deliberations on the constitution of ‘crime’, Foucault (2004) demonstrates that a crime was not appraised with reference to a moral or religious sense of right and wrong, but was considered in relation to the financial costs or losses involved. As well as using the term homo economicus as a grid of intelligibility, Foucault also uses it to refer to a ‘behaviouristically manipulable being’ (Lemke, 2001, p. 11), the corollary of this grid of rationality. Such an individual is self-interested and competitive, and for Foucault (2004, p. 271), can be considered ‘the partner, the vis-a-vis, and the basic element of the new governmental reason formulated’.
Kevin Gormley (2020) Neoliberalism and the discursive construction of
‘creativity’, Critical Studies in Education, 61:3, 313-328, DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2018.1459762
Neoliberalism... has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world
David Harvey (2007) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press
A critical examination of neoliberalism must address this transformation of its discursive deployment, as a new understanding of human nature and social exis-tence rather than a political program. Thus it is not enough to contrast neoliberalism as a political program, analyzing its policies in terms of success or failure. An ex-amination of neoliberalism entails a reexamination of the fundamental problematic of ideology, the intersection of power, concepts, modes of existence and subjectivity.
Read, J. (2009) ‘A genealogy of homo-economicus: Neoliberalism and the production of subjectivity’, Foucault Studies, 6, pp. 25–36.