Governmentality, capitalism, and subjectivity

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point the important contribution that governmentality studies make to our understanding of the social and political conditions that shape contemporary world politics. However, it suggests that the critical potential of a governmentality approach can be more fully realised by dealing in a more substantive fashion with recent developments in capitalism and the latter's relationship with political subjectivity. The article introduces some elements of Italian autonomist Marxist thought and suggests that this intellectual tradition, together with Foucault's theorisation of neoliberal subjectivity in his recently translated 1979 lectures, can offer important insights that could strengthen governmentality accounts of contemporary social and political reality. © 2009 University of Kent.