ABSTRACT
Foucault's concept of government has experienced an interesting history of reception. The concept of governmentality consists of the fact that it construes neo-liberalism not just as ideological rhetoric, as an economic reality, or as a practical anti-humanism. The defensive strategy aimed to civilize a barbaric capitalism that was out of control, and the emphasis was put on re-regulation and re-embedding: neo-liberalism as an economic reality. The critical argument is that there is some pure or anarchic economy that has to be regulated or civilized by the state shares the neo-liberal program of a separation between politics and economics. Government has been seen as some superior form of rule that unfolds in Western modernity, suggesting the displacement or marginalization of sovereign law and disciplinary technologies. The productivity of studies of governmentality and their critical potential depends on whether it will be possible to integrate innovative concepts and ideas and to open up new research methods and questions.
