May & McWhorter, "A Genealogy of Neoliberalism"

Our Final Questions for McWhorter and May

1. What, in your views, establishes methodological coherence amongst the two essays? We found difficulty finding a single underlying methodology exhibited by both pieces. May argues for a multi-causal approach. McWhorter seems more interested in describing underlying structural (or historically apriori?) resonances or patterns. This sounds potentially problematic for the authors, however a possible explanation can be put in terms of Foucault’s own methodology.

We hold (as argued by Koopman in J Phil Hist and in Chap. 1 of forthcoming ms.) that archaeology and genealogy are entirely compatible—archaeology is a methodology that explores deep structural similarities (along a single-vector [e.g., knowledge], Koopman argues) whereas genealogy is a methodological analytic for describing transformations or transitions across time in these stable structural ensembles (across multiple vectors [e.g., power-knowledge], Koopman argues). On this account, genealogy is compatible with archaeology, and can be deployed as a broad analytic of which a given archaeology would be just one part. A genealogy, on this account, is a story about the contingent intersection of a (seemingly) heterogeneous set of archaeologies. So, on this account, McWhorter’s contribution would be best seen one archaeological element that would be part of a broader genealogy that May is outlining.

2. At the end of two very interesting Mondays of discussion we find ourselves very unclear about the status of causality in genealogy and archaeology. McWhorter concludes: “I have not argued that there is any causal connection between the eugenics movement and neoliberalism” (19). But May argues for a move from “a single-explainer model to a multi-causal approach” (9). May embraces causality but McWhorter seems to avoid it.

Is this problematic? It seems so, but perhaps not. For if, as we have suggested above, McWhorter’s piece constitutes an archaeological contribution of one element to a multitude of elements that May’s broader genealogy suggests, then it might follow that the work of causal explication (along multi-causal lines) needs be addressed in May’s genealogy but need not be addressed in McWhorter’s piece.

Further Discussion Notes (Rough) on Todd May, “Approaching Neoliberalism Genealogically”

A. What is the method?

“Neoliberalism is best understood as a dispositif.”

May arguing against a single-explainer approach. He argues on behalf of a multi-causal approach. This is summarized in the final paragraph as “the enduring methodological contribution Foucault leaves us with”: “The key point to bear in mind here is that… we must resist the temptation to reduce it to a single explanation…. We must take the phenomenon, whatever it turns out to be, in its full complexity” (16). The point is that “scattered practices in diverse fields” function as explainers. This raises for us a few questions (for which we do not take ourselves to have answers):

o Why should we take genealogy to be a causal analysis rather than, say, a conditions-of-possibility approach?

§ What is the advantage of an explanation couched in terms of causation rather than in terms of conditions-of-possibility? Are these two consistent with one another? Is there coherence in the idea of a congeries of causes forming conditions of possibility?

§ Might it be useful to distinguish the idea of causing conditions of possibility rather than causing actualities (or causing conditions of actuality)? In this way we can distinguish how a multiplicity of causes makes something possible without suggesting that these causes make the thing actual. So the question might be what makes it possible for someone to be, to act like, to think like an entrepreneur or a consumer. An answer to this question, an investigation of this question, would be different from what makes it actual that somebody in particular is a consumer or an entrepreneur.

o How do we square the idea of a multi-causal analysis with the idea of analysis in terms of contingencies? Is a causal analysis inconsistent with the idea of genealogy as focused on contingencies?

B. May discusses two figures: the entrepreneur and the consumer. How do we single out these figures? In virtue of what do we delineate a figure, and the edges and borders of a figure where it begins to shade into a different ‘kind of person’?

What are the criteria for constructing or composing a domain, e.g., the domain of neoliberalism, or the domain of abnormality?

A methodology of figures in Foucault would be an interesting project. Hacking’s work on “kinds of persons” could be useful. Deleuze & Guattari’s conception of “personae” could be useful here. Figures are immanent to their dispositif. Figures and dispositifs emerge in tandem – there is a “looping effect” (Hacking) between them in virtue of which they are able to come into being together.

C. May recounts four elements necessary in accounting for the rise of neoliberalism (11).

· Intellectualist line (11ff.): a history of neoliberal thought (cf. Foucault’s 1979 CdF lectures).

· Class line (13ff.): a disparity between economic elites and those subject to economic policy – we had a number of questions about how this sort of analytic category is meant to fit into a broader genealogical analysis.

· Economic-Biological Interactions (14ff.): financial thinking intersecting with biosciences.

· Contexts and events (15ff): as that which is part of what constitutes, following Foucault, “responding to an urgent need”.

Further Discussion Notes (Rough) on Ladelle McWhorter, “Toward a Genealogy of Neoliberalism II”

Some of our questions in approaching this piece, based on our reading of May, include: A) questions about method and issues concerning the degree to which McWhorter’s piece is methodologically consistent with May’s piece; B) issues surrounding the interaction between the economic and the biological and how the genealogist is able to demonstrate connections between two disparate fields in terms of borrowing techniques and strategies and practices.

A. A question of method—is your methodology here more genealogical or archaeological?

Are you looking to establish continuity (or coherence) amongst neoliberalism and eugenics at the level of discourse (archaeology) or practice (genealogy)? Toward the end, it is asserted that, “there are strong connections… which are to be found not at the level of overt verbal reference but rather at the level of technical solution and practice” (18). This sounds more genealogical, in that the focus is practices and techniques rather than on discourse and what is said. However, is there attention to historical emergence here, or is the focus on deep structural similarity? Many of us thought the focus was more on the latter than the former, and our understanding is that genealogy treats of practices in their temporal emergence and formation, whereas archaeology treats of discourse and practice in terms of something like structural stability. A demonstration that neoliberalism and eugenics exhibit similar patterns at the level of practice sounds much more like Foucault in The Order of Things where we see, for example, structural similarities at the level of the analysis of wealth and natural history.

B. How is McWhorter’s piece building on the agenda laid out in May’s piece?

Clearly, McWhorter’s piece picks up on one thread of the broader genealogy that May outlines, particularly the third thread or element concerning what May calls “interaction between economic institutions and practices on the one hand and biological ones on the other” (14).

C. What is the point of establishing the similarity amongst eugenics and neoliberalism? What is the point of pointing out the similarity? Is the effort normative, or descriptive, or both?

Is the effort more descriptive in nature? If it is more of a descriptive effort, then we might want to hear more about the kinds of interactions that are posited amongst biological theory and economic theory. Is the interaction causal? Or is there a correlation in patterns here? If a mere correlation in patterns, what is that meant to expose, or explain? There is a correlation here in that both analyze phenomenon on the basis of a logic of competition. Eugenics involves “completion that would result in selection for superior rather than average traits” (13). Neoliberalism, similarly, “judge competition fair (or ‘free’ in their terms) when the most efficient enterprises actually do win” (14). There is also a valuation of innovation that can often act as a trump, even to competition (16-7). This leads to an analogy between the neoliberal euphemism of “free” as in “free markets” and the eugenicist conception of “fair” in the management of populations. This descriptive overlap is interesting and also certainly valuable from the point of view of a descriptive history of neoliberalism.

Or is there a normative intention here? Is it that the association with eugenics is supposed to somehow taint neoliberalism? “The logical problem with this is the same as the logical problem with eugenics” (17). This seems to be the payoff paragraph, but we did not follow the argument (although we wanted to). Is it not the case, however, that “bad” disciplines can sometimes give rise to “good” techniques? Cannot “evil capitalist corporate practice” give rise to organizational practices that “good lefty NGOs” can appropriate for their own purposes (cf. James Ferguson)? We accept (of course) that eugenics is just bad biology. But we are not sure that neoliberal economics is just bad economics for the simple reason that it shares an underlying logic of competition with eugenics. This (of course) does not show that neoliberal economics is not bad economics, it just suggests that we have not yet shown that. In sum, there is a lingering worry that the argument commits a form of the genetic fallacy—it is difficult to show that genesis is determinative of justificatory status.

Diagram of Method (Category, Object, Concept)

February 14, Rabinow, "Foucault's Untimely Struggle"

Rabinow situates Foucault’s work according to four elements: mode, object, venue, form.

Mode – “Forms of criticism and inquiry” (29). Mode functions analytically and diagnostically (32). We understand the element/category of mode in terms of methodology but not narrowly so. (We also see it in terms of what Koopman and Matza in their piece call ‘analytic’). In genealogy the mode was “history of the present” (29), but now in the later work it involves both “making what was self-evident contingent” as well as “analyzing how it had been linked in complex ways with multiple historical processes, many of them recent” (31). This maps in some ways to what Koopman calls the distinction between fact/that (the fact that X is contingent) and composition/how (how X is contingently composed).

Object – Objects are that which one inquires into and offers critique of. Objects are that with which thought is concerned. In Foucault’s thought, object is a “type of rationality” (29) or a style of rationality (for example Bentham’s style of rationality) insofar as it is a “practice” (29). It is our understanding that practice and rationality are correlative. The object, then, is practices and their corollary rationalities. It is implicit, but not explicitly stated, that Foucault’s objects shifted from modern practices and rationalities to the practices and rationalities he found in antiquity.

A comment on Object and Mode. Object and Mode are corollary in interesting ways. Rabinow quotes Foucault: “Each one of my books is a way of dismantling an object, and of constructing a method of analysis towards this end” (Foucault 1981, 29). This suggests that objects gain privileged status in Foucault’s thought. The object is what determines mode of analysis. In Foucault’s late work we see a shifted object of analysis, and the above suggests that this leads to a shifted mode of analysis. This seems potentially problematic to us. The inquirer should take some cues from the object, but an inquirer who let their mode/analytic be dictated entirely by the object could only be an inquirer who is not sufficiently self-reflective. One must adopt some mode/analytic to be able to see an object at all.

Venue – Venue specifies the total atmosphere or milieu in which one undertakes one’s critical inquiries—this should be broadly interpreted to include not only geographic/territorial features but also presumably sociological, cultural, and aesthetic/stylistic features—“a scene or setting in which something takes place” (35). We perhaps prefer a definition emphasizing the sense in which a venue is a home for a certain kind of work or action, such that a venue is a locale which facilitates, incubates, and enables actions, such as the action of thought. Rabinow tracks a shift in venue, for Foucault, from Paris and the College de France where he had a “growing sense of feeling trapped and ground down” (34) to California and UC Berkeley. We found the discussion at this point very interesting, at least in part because Rabinow is here breaking new ground in a quasi-biographical sense. The existing literature on Foucault makes far too little of the everyday practices in which the French thinker was immersed. We find this a welcome innovation.

Form – Rabinow’s focus here is on Foucault’s shifting attention toward spirituality in his course lectures of the final three years. The driving question is, “What form would a philosophic practice that would be salvational?” (37). Rabinow’s claim is that Foucault increasingly came to answer this question in terms of a conception of spirituality, for example in saying that, “The cornerstone of his lengthy explorations of the rise and fall of the care of the self as an integral part of Western philosophic practice proved to turn on the concept of spirituality” (37). Spirituality, for Rabinow, is curative and critical and involves the spiritual practitioner in struggle. Spirituality is here doing a great deal of work. Some of us found this instructive and others found it provocative. This raised for the group general questions about how to make sense of Foucault’s ethical writings given that: a) there are at least five to seven important ethical concepts floating around in these writings, b) it seems incumbent upon us to pull out one (or maybe two) of these concepts and put it forward as the more general term under which the other more particular terms fit. It sounds to us like Rabinow is suggesting that “spirituality” is the general term that functions as the hinge around which these other concepts (e.g., care of the self, aesthetics of existence, etc.) fit. Other scholars emphasize other terms as the general rubric. Some other points of emphasis: care of the self, freedom (Oksala), resistance (Thompson), self-transformation (Koopman). Interestingly, Rabinow also emphasizes “self-transformation” toward the end of the piece (40).

Discussion of "Biopower Today"

Rabinow and Rose, “Biopower Today”

Discussion began with the following questions:

1. Are R&R mobilizing Foucault’s concept of biopower in a productive way?

2. Can we describe R&R’s mobilization of biopower in terms of a genealogical (e.g., Foucaultian) analytic?

3. What is our assessment of their discussion of Agamben and Hardt/Negri?

Discussion then continued as follows. We proved obsessive with the first question.

1. Are R&R mobilizing Foucault’s concept of biopower in a productive way?

Yes, they are trying to diagnose the transformation of a concept of biopower in the midst of its transformation. They are looking at a field in which biopower figures. They are not looking through the lens of biopower to point out, “ah ha, here is biopower.” They are looking at practices of biopower. They are not looking through biopower: they are looking at forms/practices/norms of knowledge (of life), power (over life), and subjectivation (of living beings). The question is (borrowing from Koopman and Matza): is ‘biopower’ here being used as a category that enables R&R to see at all or is ‘biopower’ being used as a concept that makes sense of a field of inquiry such that R&R are tracking the emergence and/or transformation of biopower? Are they ‘applying’ biopower or ‘inquiring into’ biopower?

Ex.: we are studying elephants. Elephants are our objects of inquiry. Certain categories enable us to see elephants at all (e.g., categories of ‘speciation’ or ‘anatomical structure’). These categories enable us to grasp via the production of concepts that make sense of (classify, typify, exemplify) certain features of elephants (e.g., a particular process of speciation or a particular elephant-unique anatomical feature like a prehensile nose (exception: tapers)).

Ex.: we are studying sexuality. Sexuality is our object of inquiry. Certain categories (norms/forms of knowledge and power) enable us to see sexuality at all and get a grip on it as a viable object of study. These categories enable us to produce concepts that make sense of sexuality. One concept that makes sense of sexuality is biopower (in terms of certain regulations of certain sexuality practices).

On behalf of the latter interpretation (Koopman prefers this), they are looking at a field in which biopower figures as a conceptual sense-maker and they are seeing how that field is being transformed. They are looking at biopower in its transformations. They are looking at historical transformations in practices in which biopower helps make sense of those transformations. This enables them to be appropriately cautious insofar as they are being contextualist about it (e.g., race, genomics, and reproduction) in a way that gives their usage of the concept its specificity. They are also grasping the concept in its transformations (“grasp the transformative implications” [215]).

On behalf of the former interpretation (others preferring this), they are holding three aspects of biopower constant in a way that enables them to use this framework as a way of analyzing a field of inquiry at all.

Or perhaps they are doing both. Perhaps they are simultaneously looking at practices of race &c. through the category-lens of biopower and at the same time looking at the way in which biopower as a concept is being transformed in those practices. Is this helpful?

It may not be a productive tension. This may prove problematic because it would involve simultaneously looking through an invariant lens of biopower (and the ‘application’ of the concept to a new field) and also looking for biopower in its transformations. There is, possibly, this tension in the article. Foucault was asking, for example, “How was sexuality transformed, elaborated, and dealt with as a problematization?” R&R are asking, “How was biopower transformed?” Foucault’s was an inquiry into a set of practices. Theirs is an inquiry into a concept insofar as it structures and/or informs practices. The first order object of inquiry here is a philosopher’s concept. For Foucault, biopower emerged out of inquiry. For R&R, biopower figures as a category at the outset of inquiry.

Or it may be a productive tension. Because perhaps it enables R&R to gain sight of a field of inquiry in which biopower is a conceptual sense-maker (even if that particular sense-maker is not featured explicitly in that field by practitioners) and grasp the conceptual transformations of that sense-maker. These transformations enable them to draw attention to differences and specificities. So when they are charting transformations in the concept, what they are actually (trying to be?) looking at are the practices in their specificity.

2. Can we describe R&R’s mobilization of biopower in terms of a genealogical (e.g., Foucaultian) analytic?

Yes, to some extents. No, in other respects.

It is genealogical in that it is concerned with objects in their historicity (e.g., emergence and transformation). It is genealogical in that it is empirical while being critical (e.g., it is contextualist and specific).

Their point (one of them) is that Agamben and Hardt/Negri are not being sufficiently genealogical in their work. We agree.