In his 1978-1979 lectures, The Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault presents an analysis of the historical development of neoliberalism--focusing primarily on the German ordoliberals and the Chicago school American neoliberals. In various places Foucault mentions the connection between this liberal, or neoliberal governmentality and the biopolitical, but this relation is never clearly spelled out.
In the first lecture of 10 January 1979, Foucault says that "the analysis of biopolitics can only get under way when we have understood the general regime of this governmental reason [of liberalism]...only when we know what this governmental regime called liberalism was, will we be able to grasp what biopolitics is."
In his notes for the same lecture, he also writes, "With the emergence of political economy, with the introduction of the restrictive principle in governmental practice itself...the subjects of right on which political sovereignty is exercised appear as a population that a government must manage. This is the point of departure for the organizational line of a 'biopolitics'. But...this is only part of something much larger, which [is] this new governmental reason...Studying liberalism as the general framework of biopolitics."
So, here Foucault seems to be saying that biopolitics emerges from, is made possible by this new form of liberal political reason--that is, governmentality. In other words, once this new form of political reason creates 'the population' as an object of knowledge and of management, biopolitics can emerge; thus liberal governmentality is a condition of possibility for the biopolitical.
I'm wondering what other ways there might be for thinking the relationship between (neo)liberal governmentality and biopolitics.
Jason R. Weidner
PhD. candidate, Department of International Relations
Florida International University
Miami, FL USA