Symbiotic neoliberalism: Foucault and the impure critique of neoliberalism

This article brings together two distinct research trajectories – the growing characterization of neoliberalism as a monster and the recent debate on whether Foucault was a neoliberal – to investigate a dimension that these bodies of scholarship have not examined: our involvement in neoliberalism’s reproduction. To this end, the article introduces the concept of ‘symbiotic neoliberalism’. Drawing on the notion of parasitic neoliberalism (which underpins depictions of neoliberalism as a monster) and on the study of ecosystems (which approaches parasitism as one of the manifestations of symbiosis), and building on Foucault’s notion of the subject as a ‘vehicle of power’, I develop an account of neoliberalism as a symbiotic force that is not a monster ontologically separate from ‘us’ – the subjects that partake in its reproduction. I then use this framework to analyse Foucault’s alleged fascination with neoliberalism. Rejecting the thesis of ‘neoliberal Foucault’, I suggest that his seemingly sympathetic stances may be read both as an (un)conscious endorsement of certain features of neoliberalism and an attempt to challenge its ‘game of truth’ by ‘playing it differently’. In this symbiotic neoliberalism – embodied by Foucault’s persona and inspired by his approach – the subject as a ‘vehicle of power’ is neither solely a victim nor merely an endorser of the neoliberal system but a combination of both. This dual capacity allows for the articulation of an impure critique of neoliberalism that begins with the recognition of our symbiotic/impure entanglement in its ‘regime of truth’.