ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter of the book examines the implications of a consent-as-autonomy story that is in service to neoliberal rationality. Likening this narrative to the new ‘art of government’ that Foucault examined in his own study of the emergence of neoliberalism, this chapter argues that ‘consent’ is best understood as a means of producing and managing a certain kind of freedom (rather than as autonomy itself). The law’s consenting subject is ‘free’ to act as she wishes, provided she does so in ways that are in alignment with neoliberal understandings of the ‘common good’. This chapter argues that, akin to its role in the other contexts explored in the book, consent continues to operate within a rubric of submission. The central difference between these pre-modern and modern conceptions of consent is in the latter’s commitment to framing everything – even submission – as an act of autonomy. The chapter concludes by suggesting that redefining or reforming consent may not be as fruitful without first opening a space to contest the doctrine’s common sense story of autonomy.
