Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates the rise of a neoliberal affective regime that governs body and mind – a transformation process built on and signifying major economic, political, and social changes, such as new labour relations and a new mode of state governance, a neoliberal governmentality, new forms of subjectivation, and modifications of the power relationship between the genders. In the presentation of the research about these transformations – the theoretical perspectives, genealogical developments, empirical examples – the book draws on Michel Foucault’s state concept of governmentality. The book describes affective power not only in transforming state bureaucracies, but also in the fields of economy and consumption, for instance. Moreover, it takes gender relations as one important locus of re-organised affective power relations and forms of governing.