Re: Fouc Hayek & liberalism

>I am interested in the way in which liberal discourse once implemented
>becomes illiberal and seems almost despite itself to work back/forward
>towards the all-embracing control envisioned in 'police' as described by
>Foucault, >But liberalism, at any rate as understood by Hayek, and for
certain purposes Menger, depends upon the unknowable , the completely
>free-choosing subject. This subject cannot be so planned for. that is
>why Hayek sees the market as indispensable to freedom - it is a
>discovery procedure for uncovering the unpredictable preferences of the
>subject. Yet in a form of liberalism dependent upon 'homo economicus'
>that is, the completely predictable form of the subject, we can return
>to the manipulation of the polity through the desires and appropriate
>incentives which economic 'science' allows us to define and 'know'.
>Hence, I think, we have a return to 'police'.

Has anyone cites for the Fouc/Hayek connection...either by the man himself,
or any one else anywhere? I know this request was floated a while ago, but
am hoping something turned up or was sent off-list. I do think Nesta is
dead-on above about Hayek and liberalism becoming-police, and I'd hope F
was on the same track himself, and not something dubious in re "chaos" and
the proper care of the self. Not that Hayek shouldnt be read of course,
perhaps even as something more than a symptom; but his grounding of the
"Good Society" in a spontaneous "catallaxy" somehow brought forth into the
world by *the* Market is not only politically egregious, but simply absurd
at some level (as if this harmonious Order has its Base in information
about prices?!).

Best,

Daniel


Daniel Vukovich
English; The Unit for Criticism
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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