Foreign Rights

Michel Foucault’s last decade coincided with a brutal decline of the hopes for social transformation that had emerged in the post-war period. Confronted with this « end of the revolution », the philosopher tried to reinvent the way we think about politics and resistance, which he felt his generation had failed to do. It is with this perspective in mind that he became interested in neoliberalism as a tool to rethink the conceptual foundations of the left and to conceive of a governmentality that is more tolerant of social experiments, opening a space for minority practices and greater autonomy of the individual. In short, the means of carrying out the project stated at the end of his life, that of « not being governed quite so much ». In this respect, Foucault paradoxically reduced the scope of social critique and, in his quest for a « left governmentality », anticipated and contributed to the shaping of the contemporary political situation.