Geoforum 36 (2005) 7–12

[Link]/locate/geoforum

Critical review

The consolations of ÔneoliberalismÕ

Received 6 August 2004; received in revised form 29 August 2004

Abstract

Recent work on neoliberalism has sought to reconcile a Marxist understanding of hegemony with poststructuralist ideas of dis-
course and governmentality derived from Foucault. This paper argues that this convergence cannot resolve the limitations of Marx-
ist theories of contemporary socio-economic change, and nor do they do justice to the degree to which FoucaultÕs work might be
thought of as a supplement to liberal political thought. The turn to Foucault highlights the difficulty that theories of hegemony have
in accounting for the suturing together of top-down programmes with the activities of everyday life. However, the prevalent inter-
pretation of governmentality only compounds this problem, by supposing that the implied subject-effects of programmes of rule are
either automatically realised, or more or less successfully ÔcontestedÕ and ÔresistedÕ. Theories of hegemony and of governmentality
both assume that subject-formation works through a circular process of recognition and subjection. Both approaches therefore treat
Ôthe socialÕ as a residual effect of hegemonic projects and/or governmental rationalities. This means that neither approach can
acknowledge the proactive role that long-term rhythms of socio-cultural change can play in reshaping formal practices of politics,
policy, and administration. The instrumental use of notions of governmentality to sustain theories of neoliberalism and neoliberal-
ization supports a two-dimensional understanding of political power—which is understood in terms of relations of imposition and
resistance—and of geographical space—which is understood in terms of the diffusion and contingent combination of hegemonic
projects. Theories of neoliberalism provide a consoling image of how the world works, and in their simplistic reiteration of the idea
that liberalism privileges the market and individual self-interest, they provide little assistance in thinking about how best to balance
equally compelling imperatives to respect pluralistic difference and enable effective collective action.
Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

‘‘ÔLiberalismÕ means different things to different American Republicans who condemn the Demo-
people. The term is currently used in Europe by crats as bleeding-heart liberals are precisely the
the Left to castigate the Right for blind faith in sort of people who are condemned as heartless
the value of an unfettered market economy and neoliberals by French Socialists.’’ (Nagel, 2002,
insufficient attention to the importance of state p. 87).
action in realizing the values of equality and social
justice. [. . .] In the United States, on the other
hand, the term is used by the Right to castigate
1. Irreconcilable differences?
the Left for unrealistic attachment to the values
of social and economic equality and the too ready
Judging by recent conference papers, journal articles,
use of government power to pursue those ends at
and the like, it seems that a reconciliation of a political-
the cost of individual freedom and initiative. Thus
economy analysis of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ with a poststruc-
turalist analysis of ‘‘advanced liberalism’’ is well under
way. Commenting on this trend, Larner (2003) sug-
E-mail address: [Link]@[Link] gests that poststructuralist accounts that draw upon

0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/[Link].2004.08.006
8 C. Barnett / Geoforum 36 (2005) 7–12

FoucaultÕs scattered ruminations on governmentality for the purposes of shoring up the holes in Marxist nar-
can usefully supplement the prevalent Marxist analysis ratives of ‘‘neoliberalism’’.
of neoliberalism and neoliberalization. The Foucauldian
approach is recommended because it is more attuned to
the contingency and unanticipated consequences of neo- 2. A marriage of convenience
liberal agendas. However, at the risk of re-opening a set
of debates that may or may not be ‘‘hackneyed’’, I want The prevalent conceptualization of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ is
to suggest that the Marxist and Foucauldian approaches indebted to Gramscian state theory, inflected by a heavy
are not necessarily as easily reconciled as it might seem. dose of French regulation theory. ‘‘Neoliberalism’’,
They imply different models of the nature of explanatory from this perspective, is basically a new variant of a
concepts; different models of causality and determina- class-driven project of state restructuring in the interests
tion; different models of social relations and agency; of free-markets and expanded accumulation. Accord-
and different normative understandings of political ingly, ‘‘neoliberalism’’ is supposed to refer to a pro-
power. We should not finesse these differences away gramme of policies and governance arrangements that
by presuming that the two approaches converge around favour privatization, the liberalization of markets, and
a common real-world referent, so-called ‘‘neoliber- more competition. Understood in this way, ‘‘neoliberal-
alism’’. ism’’ is presented as a coherent ideological project with
By consolidating the taken-for-granted reference to clear and unambiguous origins, whose spread is
‘‘neoliberalism’’, this convergence between Marxist and sustained and circulated by an identifiable set of institu-
Foucauldian approaches installs a narrative that is even tions. The basic analytical claim is that ‘‘neoliberalism’’
more disabling than stories about ‘‘globalization’’. The is a ‘‘hegemonic’’ project. This refers to two related
common usage of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ as a descriptive con- propositions: firstly, that political dominance is exer-
cept and of ‘‘neoliberalization’’ as an explanatory con- cised by the formation of coalitions amongst different
cept reproduces a narrative in which recent history is interests; and secondly, that the primary medium for
understood in terms of a motivated shift away from suturing together such formations is a set of coherent
public-collective values to private-individualistic values. ideas and images about the world. This second aspect
Stories about ‘‘neoliberalism’’ thereby succeed only in of theories of ‘‘neoliberal hegemony’’ has a double as-
finessing a set of interminable conflicts between equally pect. Hegemonic ideas are supposed to tie together dif-
compelling values of individualism and collectivism, ferent elite actors within a ruling bloc; but they are
autonomy and responsibility, freedom and obligation. also supposed to do the rather more ordinary ideologi-
They do so by aligning themselves with a one-sided pic- cal work of legitimizing the political subordination of
ture of what liberalism is concerned with. Liberalism has whole populations. The notion that ‘‘neoliberalism’’
its roots in the affirmation of the moral sovereignty of amounts to a clearly defined, purposive project pursued
the individual, expressed in the principle of equality. by specifiable interest groups, which aims to subordinate
Historically, liberalismÕs commitment to equality as a public values to those of the market, conveniently re-
political principle generates a tendency to use the power solves the analytical problem of the relationship between
of the state to extend equality and oppose inequality. politics and economy. It does so by presenting ‘‘neolib-
Herein lies the source of the apparent incongruity noted eralism’’ as a ‘‘hegemonic’’ project ‘‘in which capitalÕs
by Nagel above, whereby liberalism names both the de- logic is vocalized as a political programme and directive
fence of liberty against undue state intervention as well ideology. We donÕt have to worry about how to think
as the opposite doctrine, according to which state power about Ôrelative autonomyÕ since we (apparently) live in
should be deployed to ensure the conditions of equal lib- a period when politics and economic interest are directly
erty. This incongruity in meaning points to a set of con- fused’’ (Clarke, 2004a, p. 4).
flicts of value which are not easily resolvable, unless one The political economy conceptualization of ‘‘hege-
is happy to accept the idea that any and all political con- mony’’ is related to a particular framing of the geogra-
flict is really an expression of the seamless unfolding of phies of ‘‘neoliberalism’’. On the one hand, it supports
the latent contradictions of capitalism. Liberalism is one the idea that ‘‘neoliberalism’’ diffuses downwards and
tradition of thought, amongst others, that is concerned outwards from a coherent set of institutional sites
with elucidating the conditions for living peaceably with located in the United States and Europe. On the other
interminable conflicts of value, guided by the hope of hand, this means that academics can reassure themselves
progress but without the fantasy of transcendence. It about their sensitivity to difference and contingency by
seems entirely plausible to suppose that some of Fou- insisting that ‘‘neoliberalism’’ arrives differently in differ-
caultÕs later writings might throw new light upon the ent places, combining with other processes to produce
established dilemmas of liberal thought. But whatever distinctive manifestations of what, nevertheless, remain
potential FoucaultÕs ideas might have in this respect is varieties of a single genus. The recent turn to Foucault
likely to be annulled if those ideas are instrumentalized amongst theorists of neoliberalism fits well with this
 C. Barnett / Geoforum 36 (2005) 7–12 9

geographical framing of the centres and peripheries, nec- discipline, wherein detailed and bounded spatio-tempo-
essary properties and contingent realizations, of ‘‘neo- ral routines automatically inscribe precise subject-
liberal hegemony’’. Foucault is invoked in two ways. effects. In contrast, the attraction of notions such as
Firstly, in the diffusionistic narrative of neoliberalism- governmentality and biopolitics is that they address a
as-hegemony, extensive use is made of the idea that different scale of activities—that of whole networks of
‘‘neoliberalism’’ can be understood as a ‘‘discourse’’, institutions, bureaucracies, and states. But there is still
where this is understood to refer to the institutionally a persistent tendency to assume that governmentality
located and regulative usage of ideas and concepts to simply refers to the extension of a disciplinary mode
shape pictures of reality. The concept of discourse is of power over larger spatial scales under the auspices
therefore understood instrumentally, as a synonym for of the territorialized state. The trade-off between the
ideology. It is used to refer to a set of imaginary-repre- scope and intensity of forms of rule that is implied by
sentative tools deployed by specific groups in pursuit of the idea of governing-at-a-distance is therefore ignored
their interest in augmenting their own power. (see Barnett, 2001; Allen, 2003). In this elision of disci-
The attraction of the concept of hegemony is sup- pline and governmentality, FoucaultÕs authority is in-
posed to lie in its broadening out of the ways in which voked to refine a story that continues to present the
political domination is meant to operate—through con- reproduction of power-relations as a matter of social
sent as well as coercion. But the recurrent feature of the control.
political-economy invocation of hegemony is that it The variable relationship between the scope and
lacks any clear sense of how consent is actually secured, intensity of rule should open up a set of questions about
or any convincing account of how hegemonic projects various middle ranges of agency. However, an entire
are anchored at the level of everyday life, other than paradigm of poststructuralist theory is unable to address
implying that this works by ‘‘getting at’’ people in some these because it remains in thrall to an account of sub-
way or other. And this is where the second use of Fou- ject-formation that privileges mechanisms of recognition
cault in theories of neoliberalism-as-hegemony comes to and subjection. In this respect, the turn to Foucault
the fore. Extending the range of activities that are com- amongst theorists of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ recalls the re-
modified, commercialized and marketized necessarily pressed memory of the strengths and weaknesses of
implies that subjectivities have to be re-fitted as active the Althusserian concept of Ideological State Appara-
consumers, entrepreneurial subjects, participants, and tuses. The new favoured vocabulary of ‘‘enrolment’’
so on. Accordingly, the notion of ‘‘governmentality’’ is and ‘‘enlistment’’ echoes AlthusserÕs attempt to combine
appealed to in order to explain how broad macro-struc- the dual sense of self-formation as a process of being
tural shifts from state regulation to market regulation both a subject-of and subject-to. Indeed, one can even
are modulated with the micro-contexts of everyday blend the vocabulary of governmentality with that of ac-
routines. tor-networks and performativity in order to provide
In the emerging paradigm which sees ‘‘neoliberalism’’ seemingly compelling accounts of the ways in which,
through the lens of FoucaultÕs ideas on governmentality, for example, new styles of management knowledge mag-
there is a repeated tendency to interpret governmentality ically ‘‘interpellate’’ and ‘‘hail’’ new subjects into exis-
as a distinctive modality of state action. On this reading, tence (Thrift, 2000). The recourse to this vocabulary of
governmentality refers to a mutation of state-power that hailing and interpellation alongside that of enrolment
allows for the more precise and incipient regulation of and enlistment marks the point at which the problem
conduct at a very detailed level at the same time as of defining the precise relationship between an open-
extending the reach of state power over large territorial ended sense of the enactment of power-relations and a
scales. The literature on governmentality provides theo- sense of power as direction is closed down without any
rists of neoliberalism with a set of concepts—such as specification of the causal mechanisms through which
‘‘apparatuses’’, ‘‘technologies’’, and ‘‘assemblages’’— these articulations are sustained.
that are understood to be the instrumental mechanisms
by which clearly defined actors, possessed with clearly
articulated interests, pursue their clearly articulated pro- 3. There is no such thing as neoliberalism!
grammes. Unfortunately, FoucaultÕs ideas on govern-
mentality, as systematized by writers like Nikolas The blind-spot in theories of neoliberalism—whether
Rose, cannot actually do the work that they are called neo-Marxist and Foucauldian—comes with trying to ac-
upon to do by theorists of ‘‘neoliberalism’’. This is be- count for how top-down initiatives ÔtakeÕ in everyday sit-
cause when it comes to defining how top-down initia- uations. So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop
tives are articulated to everyday routines, theories of thinking of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ as a coherent ‘‘hegemonic’’
governmentality have exactly the same problem as theo- project altogether. For all its apparent critical force,
ries of neoliberalism-as-hegemony. This problem is com- the vocabulary of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ and ‘‘neoliberaliza-
pletely elided in FoucaultÕs influential work on tion’’ in fact provides a double consolation for leftist
10 C. Barnett / Geoforum 36 (2005) 7–12

academics: it supplies us with plentiful opportunities for have come to recognise as ‘‘hegemonic neoliberalism’’
unveiling the real workings of hegemonic ideologies in a is a muddled set of ad hoc, opportunistic accommoda-
characteristic gesture of revelation; and in so doing, it tions to these unstable dynamics of social change as it
invites us to align our own professional roles with the is to think of it as the outcome of highly coherent polit-
activities of various actors ‘‘out there’’, who are always ical-ideological projects. Processes of privatization, mar-
framed as engaging in resistance or contestation. The ket liberalization, and de-regulation have often followed
conceptualization of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ as a ‘‘hegemonic’’ an ironic pattern in so far as they have been triggered by
project does not need refining by adding a splash of citizensÕ movements arguing from the left of the political
Foucault. Perhaps we should try to do without the con- spectrum against the rigidities of statist forms of social
cept of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ altogether, because it might policy and welfare provision in the name of greater
actually compound rather than aid in the task of figur- autonomy, equality, and participation (e.g. Horwitz,
ing out how the world works and how it changes. One 1989). The political re-alignments of the last three or
reason for this is that, between an overly economistic four decades cannot therefore be adequately understood
derivation of political economy and an overly statist in terms of a straightforward shift from the left to the
rendition of governmentality, stories about ‘‘neoliberal- right, from values of collectivism to values of individual-
ism’’ manage to reduce the understanding of social rela- ism, or as a re-imposition of class power. The emergence
tions to a residual effect of hegemonic projects and/or and generalization of this populist ethos has much long-
governmental programmes of rule (see Clarke, 2004a). er, deeper, and wider roots than those ascribed to ‘‘hege-
Stories about ‘‘neoliberalism’’ pay little attention to monic neoliberalism’’. And it also points towards the
the pro-active role of socio-cultural processes in provok- extent to which easily the most widely resonant political
ing changes in modes of governance, policy, and regula- rationality in the world today is not right-wing market
tion. Consider the example of the restructuring of public liberalism at all, but is, rather, the polyvalent discourse
services such as health care, education, and criminal jus- of ‘‘democracy’’ (see Barnett and Low, 2004).
tice in the UK over the last two or three decades. This Recent theories of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ have retreated
can easily be thought of in terms of a ‘‘hegemonic’’ pro- from the appreciation of the long-term rhythms of
ject of ‘‘neoliberalization’’, and certainly one dimension socio-cultural change, which Stuart Hall once developed
of this process has been a form of anti-statism that has in his influential account of Thatcherism as a variant of
rhetorically contrasted market provision against the authoritarian populism. Instead, they favour elite-fo-
rigidities of the state. But in fact these ongoing changes cused analyses of state bureaucracies, policy networks,
in the terms of public-policy debate involve a combina- and the like. One consequence of the residualization of
tion of different factors that add up to a much more dis- the social is that theories of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ have great
persed populist reorientation in policy, politics, and difficulty accounting for, or indeed even in recognizing,
culture. These factors include changing consumer expec- new forms of ‘‘individualized collective-action’’ (March-
tations, involving shifts in expectations towards public etti, 2003) that have emerged in tandem with the
entitlements which follow from the generalization of apparent ascendancy of ‘‘neoliberal hegemony’’: envi-
consumerism; the decline of deference, involving shifts ronmental politics and the politics of sustainability;
in conventions and hierarchies of taste, trust, access, new forms of consumer activism oriented by an ethics
and expertise; and the refusals of the subordinated, refer- of assistance and global solidarity; the identity politics
ring to the emergence of anti-paternalist attitudes found of sexuality related to demands for changes in modes
in, for example, womenÕs health movements or anti-psy- of health care provision, and so on (see Norris, 2002).
chiatry movements. They include also the development All of these might be thought of as variants of what
of the politics of difference, involving the emergence of we might want to call bottom-up governmentality. This
discourses of institutional discrimination based on gen- refers to the notion that non-state and non-corporate ac-
der, sexuality, race, and disability. This has disrupted tors are also engaged in trying to govern various fields of
the ways in which welfare agencies think about inequal- activity, both by acting on the conduct and contexts of
ity, helping to generate the emergence of contested ordinary everyday life, but also by acting on the conduct
inequalities, in which policies aimed at addressing of state and corporate actors as well. Rose (1999, pp.
inequalities of class and income develop an ever more 281–284) hints at the outlines of such an analysis, at
expansive dynamic of expectation that public services the very end of his paradigmatic account of governmen-
should address other kinds of inequality as well (see tality, but investigation of this phenomenon is poorly
Clarke, 2004b). developed at present. Instead, the trouble-free amalgam-
None of these populist tendencies is simply an expres- ation of FoucaultÕs ideas into the Marxist narrative of
sion of a singular ‘‘hegemonic’’ project of ‘‘neoliberal- ‘‘neoliberalism’’ sets up a simplistic image of the world
ization’’. They are effects of much longer rhythms of divided between the forces of hegemony and the spirits
socio-cultural change that emanate from the bottom- of subversion (see Sedgwick, 2003, pp. 11–12). And
up. It seems just as plausible to suppose that what we clinging to this image only makes it all the more difficult
 C. Barnett / Geoforum 36 (2005) 7–12 11

to acknowledge the possibility of positive political ac- Ivison (1997) calls the ‘‘freedom to be formed and
tion that does not conform to a romanticized picture normed’’. Over time, FoucaultÕs own work moved stea-
of rebellion, contestation, or protest against domination dily away from an emphasis on the forming-and-norming
(see Touraine, 2001). end of this formulation towards an emphasis on the free-
Theories of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ are unable to recognize dom end. This shift was itself a reflection of the realiza-
the emergence of new and innovative forms of individ- tion that the circularities of poststructuralist theories of
ualized collective action because their critical imagina- subjectivity can only be broken by developing an ac-
tion turns on a simple evaluative opposition between count of the active receptivity of people to being direc-
individualism and collectivism, the private and the pub- ted. But, in the last instance, neither the story of
lic. The radical academic discourse of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ neoliberalism-as-hegemony or of neoliberalism-as-gov-
frames the relationship between collective action and ernmentality can account for the forms of receptivity,
individualism simplistically as an opposition between pro-activity, and generativity that might help to explain
the good and the bad. In confirming a narrow account how the rhythms of the everyday are able to produce ef-
of liberalism, understood primarily as an economic doc- fects on macro-scale processes, and vice versa. So, rather
trine of free markets and individual choice, there is a pe- than finding convenient synergies between what are al-
culiar convergence between the radical academic left ready closely related theoretical traditions, perhaps it
and the right-wing interpretation of liberal thought is better to keep open those tiresome debates about
exemplified by Hayekian conservatism. By obliterating the degree of coherence between them, at the same time
the political origins of modern liberalism—understood as trying to broaden the horizons of our theoretical curi-
as answering the problem of how to live freely in soci- osity a little more widely.
eties divided by interminable conflicts of value, interest,
and faith—the discourse of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ reiterates a
longer problem for radical academic theory of being Acknowledgement
unable to account for its own normative priorities in a
compelling way. And by denigrating the value of indi- Thanks to Michael Samers, Dave Land, and Jessica
vidualism as just an ideological ploy by the right, the Pykett for thoughtful criticisms of earlier versions of
pejorative vocabulary of ‘‘neoliberalism’’ invites us the argument presented here.
to take solace in an image of collective decision-making
as a practically and normatively unproblematic pro-
cedure.
The recurrent problem for theories of ‘‘neoliberal- References
ism’’ and ‘‘neoliberalization’’ is their two-dimensional
Allen, J., 2003. Lost Geographies of Power. Blackwell Publishers,
view of both political power and of geographical space.
Oxford.
They can only account for the relationship between top- Barnett, C., 2001. Culture, geography and the arts of government.
down initiatives and bottom-up developments by re- Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19, 7–24.
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subject-effects. The turn to an overly systematized the- governing the social or contesting the social. Paper prepared for the
ory of governmentality, derived from Foucault, only conference Contemporary Governance and the Question of the
compounds the theoretical limitations of economistic Social, University of Alberta, 11–13 June. Copy available from
conceptualizations of ‘‘neoliberalism’’. The task for so- John Clarke, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University,
Milton Keynes, UK.
cial theory today remains a quite classical one, namely
Clark, J., 2004b. Dissolving the public realm? The logics and limits of
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govern the intersections between abstract, centrally pro- Horwitz, R., 1989. The Irony of Regulatory Reform. Oxford Univer-
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Norris, P., 2002. Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism.
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