Conceptualizing new modes of state governmentality – power, violence and the ontological mono-politics of neoliberalism

: power, violence and the ontological mono-politics of neoliberalism

: Joronen Mikko

: 2013

: Geopolitics

: 2

: 18

: 2

: 356

: 370

: 15

: 1465-0045

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2012.723289

: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14650045.2012.723289

This paper explores the ontological constitution of the neoliberal state. By enriching Michel Foucault’s work on neoliberal governmentality with Heideggerian reading of the ontological conditions involved in the process, the paper argues for an understanding of neoliberalism as a mono-political process of ‘enframing’, through which things and human capabilities are revealed as an array of ‘reserves’ set available for the market rational utilization. It is argued that the neoliberal state is not based on the ideological or discursive turn in political practices, but on the extending drive, through which the real itself, including the ethical constitution of human conducts, natural entities, and life (with its possibilities), is ontologically positioned to serve the interests of profit-making. The paper concludes by showing how the neoliberal state and the economization of everyday life are fundamentally based on the ontological violence of concealing the openness of being, and thus, the possibility for ontological politics.