Thomas Biebricher

Foucault and the politics of rights

The article aims to offer an assessment of the complex position of Michel Foucault on the political significance of rights-claiming, i.e. the politics of rights. Although the theorist Foucault has reservations regarding rights-claiming and only vaguely gestures at a ‘new form of right’ the intellectual Foucault resorts to the practice of rights-claiming on many occasions. The article argues that in these interventions by the intellectual Foucault indeed such a ‘new form of right’ is discernible that rests on a radical rights constructivism. The article concludes with a number of caveats regarding such an emphatically political practice of rights-claiming.

(Ir-)Responsibilization, genetics and neuroscience

The concept of responsibilization that originally emerged out of the context of the so-called Governmentality Studies is now widely used in various social sciences to describe a governing technology particularly attuned to the challenge of neoliberalism, i.e. how to govern free individuals. However, in seemingly paradoxical simultaneity with the hegemeony of neoliberalism that relies heavily on individual choice, freedom and responsibility, two powerful scientific discourses exist that appear to undermine these assumptions vehemently, namely genetics and neuroscience. Starting from a discussion of the strengths and limits of the notion of responsibilization, the article argues for the need to introduce the complementary concept of irresponsibilization that can be interpreted as a form of what Foucault in his lectures on the History of Governmentality refers to as ‘counter-conduct’ – in this case, against the neoliberal governing technology of responsibilization. The article proceeds to explore to what extent genetics and neuroscience can be considered discourses fuelling forms of genetic and/or neuro-irresponsibilization, which would make sense of the seemingly paradoxical co-hegemony of neoliberalism, on the one hand, and genetics and neuro-science, on the other. However, the article ultimately argues that, upon closer inspection of the findings in these disciplines and how they are used, it turns out that constituting oneself as a ‘somatic individual’ as a form of counter-conduct comes at a considerable cost, notably new forms of genetic and/or neuro-responsibility. Thus, the article closes with the twofold conclusion that wherever there is responsibilization, there is also irresponsibilization and that genetic and neuro-irresponsibilization are risky strategies of counter-conduct that might bring in responsibilization on a different level through the back door again.

Revisiting Johan Galtung's Concept of Structural Violence

This symposium is organized around a common concern: if we, as political scientists, limit ourselves to an analytics of violence that points solely to agents and intentions, we are sure to miss the pervasive forms of violence that are “built into” structures, institutions, ideologies, and histories. Through an engagement with the concept of “structural violence,” a term coined by Johan Galtung in his path-breaking 1969 article, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” each of the authors collected here reflect on and extend Galtung’s work to confront ways in which violence shapes and reshapes our experiences that cannot be accounted for by liability-based models of agency and force. They do so with the shared belief

What's Wrong with Neoliberalism?

mistaken view of the public sphere, a view that assumes that making evil visible will necessarily lead to its eventual eradication. It seems to me that the inverse is at least as plausible, viz. that it is not invisibility that allows violence to be repeated and reproduced but that repetition and reproduction make violence invisible. I have argued that we need the term “structural violence,” despite its problems and insufficiencies, to designate forms of injury inflicted in ways that do not meet the criteria of the spectacle and that therefore do not register as violence. Moreover, what makes such injuries structural is not simply that they do not obey the juridical grammar, according to which responsibility must be assigned to an individual agent. In addition, such violence is structural because of its recurrent and iterative temporality, the fact that it is reproduced— differentially of course—and that this reproduction and reproducibility are not just contingent but constitutive aspects of contemporary economies of violence.

Power in neoliberal thought

The paper examines how questions of power are addressed in neoliberal thought. The thesis underlying this endeavor is the following: all varieties of neoliberal thought harbor a blind spot regarding various forms of power. This means that certain power effects are overlooked or systematically brushed aside by definitional fiat. The paper aims to validate this thesis by discussing two leading proponents of neoliberal thought whose respective approaches to the issue of power can be considered representative of neoliberal theory in general: Friedrich August von Hayek and Walter Eucken. While Hayek attempts to marginalize certain forms of economic power through a strict focus on a narrow understanding of coercion, Eucken confronts the issue of market power directly. Still, he in turn remains oblivious not only to the power effects of his own ‘scientific’ discourse but also the subjectivating power of markets to mold ‘entrepreneurial subjects’.

Neoliberalism and Law: The Case of the Constitutional Balanced-Budget Amendment

This chapter discusses the significance of law in neoliberal theory and practice. Prefaced by a brief look at the role that law plays in the theories of the ordo- and neoliberal thinkers Franz Bohm and Friedrich August von Hayek, the subsequent sections focus on the work of James Buchanan and his brand of neoliberalism, which combines constitutional economics public choice theory. Buchanan’s core demand is a balanced-budget amendment to the constitution. The following sections examine this measure in its various aspects before the final section switches to the world of “actually existing neoliberalism” with a discussion of the various reforms of the economic governance structure of the European Union in recent years, particularly the “Fiscal Compact”, which amounts to the real world equivalent of a balanced-budget amendment.

Ökonomie in der Krise? Das neoliberale Modell der USA unter Druck

Ausgehend von einer Erorterung der historischen Ursprunge und theoretischen Grundlagen des Neoliberalismus analysiert der vorliegende Beitrag die Neoliberalisierungsprozesse der US-amerikanischen Gesellschaft von der Reagan-Ara bis zum Vorabend der Finanzkrise 2008. Auf dieser Grundlage wird zunachst diskutiert, inwiefern sich die Finanzkrise auch als Krise des Neoliberalismus verstehen lasst und ob es zu entsprechenden politischen Reformen als Reaktion auf diese Krise gekommen ist. Abschliesend werden auch mit Blick auf die Erfolgschancen zukunftiger Reformen einige Grunde fur ihr weitgehendes Ausbleiben erlautert.

Souveränität und Recht in der Staatsanalytik Foucaults

Konsultiert man eine der vielen mittlerweile vorliegenden Einfuhrungen in das Werk Michel Foucaults, so findet sich dort zumeist viel Interessantes zu solch schillernden Begriffen wie Diskurs, Macht/Wissen, Biopolitik und Gouvernementalitat, die allesamt nicht oder nur in einem sehr vermittelten Sinne aus dem Arsenal der konventionellen politischen Ideen stammen. Dagegen wird sich vermutlich wenig Substanzielles zu solch klassischen Topoi der politischen Theorie wie etwa Souveranitat und Recht finden und die Argumentation wird oftmals darauf hinauslaufen, Foucaults Innovationskraft gerade in der Absage an diese traditionellen Begrifflichkeiten zu verorten, denen kaum mehr als der Status von Negativfolien zukommt, von denen sich ‚unsere Gegenwart‘, an deren Verstandnis Foucault so sehr interessiert war, in umso scharferen Konturen abhebt. Und obwohl diese Art der Darstellung durchaus einiges fur sich hat, so ist sie, wenn auch nicht falsch, doch zumindest unvollstandig, wie ich in diesem Beitrag zu zeigen versuche.