Introduction

This introductory chapter addresses the epistemological and methodological bases of the book, outlining the rationale behind combining insights taken from Michel Foucault’s analyses of governmentality with the post-structuralist discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, as a way of explaining the unfolding of neoliberalism in British politics in the post-Thatcher period. That is prefaced by a discussion of the inescapability of objectification in the social sciences.