ABSTRACT
Michel Foucault studied the history of liberalism by analysing the changing role of the state's relationship with society. The state is studied not as an institution but from the perspective of the practice of government. Heterotopic behaviour also creates a specific relation to time. Heterotopic entities are heterochronic, they tend to have their own time frames, different from the one occurring within social or political society: further, they redefine space as well as time. A heterotopia always presupposes systems of opening and closing but maintains a controlled relationship with its environment. Heterotopias differ from public spaces: you cannot freely enter into heterotopias. State government, which first announced and then exemplified modernity, introduced a break with pastoral government. Liberal govermentality is a critique of the governmentality of the state of police which rules competition between strengths internal to society. Neoliberalism deals with the question of sovereignty of the state through the degovernmentalisation of the state.
