ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on financialization research that draws on the post-structural theorizations of contemporary power relations provided by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. The intertwined theoretical projects of Foucault and Deleuze would perhaps seem an unlikely source of inspiration for understanding financialization. The chapter suggests that Foucauldian and Deleuzean theorizations of power have the potential to facilitate a more wide-reaching agenda for research that includes, but also extends well beyond, everyday socio-economic life. It illustrates the potential of a wide-reaching post-structural agenda for research into the financialization of life. The financialization of everyday life is understood primarily in relation to a particular regime of neo-liberal governmentalized power that, including market deregulation and the privatization and individualization of welfare, features the instantiation of techniques of self-government, or what Foucault terms “governmentality”. The contribution of Foucault and Deleuze to the study of the financialization of everyday life is also apparent when these post-structural theorists are mobilized alongside Karl Marx.
