Governamentalidade e subjetivação: Genealogia da relação entre governo e economia a partir de Arendt e Foucault

Abstract

In this thesis, we propose a genealogical analysis of the relationship between techniques of governmentality and forms of subjectivation, starting from a dialogue between the categories of the theoretical arsenal mobilized by Hannah Arendt in “The Human Condition” and the results obtained by Foucault in his so-called biopolitical courses on the late seventies. In the classic distinction between public and private spheres, we find a distinction between politics and government, with the latter being associated with the domestic economy, but also with the pastorate model. We defend, with Arendt, that the ancient notion of politics is lost in the process of expansion of the social sphere; with Foucault, that the pastoral model supports the classic governmentality; with both, that this double event leverages the economy to the center of political concerns in modernity, which means the indefinite increase in production and the care for the “biological life” of the population. Political economy causes a shift in understanding of the most effective way to maintain order; with the advent of liberalism, the theory of spontaneous order emerges, which is the true basis of the idea of civil society and of the contemporary form of subjectivation, that is, the type named animal laborans by Arendt and homo oeconomicus by Foucault. The updating of the liberal discourse in the so-called “neoliberalism” causes shifts in this model, especially because the economic exchanges between agents leave the center of intelligibility, applying from now on the principle of competition. However, Arendt's observation that in the modern world we move from a model of action to that of human behavior is still valid; the latter is moldable, predictable, and for this very reason, according to Foucault, it guarantees the governance of individuals. In the works of both authors, we find ethical notes that, if they seem to point to very different solutions – from love of the world to self-government – somehow seem to agree in trying to overcome the subjectivation model of contemporary times.