(WORKING PAPER, DO NOT CITE!)

On the ontologies of neoliberalisms and beyond

Ramiro Enrique Borja Martínez

Student

Master's degree programme in Global Biopolitics

Faculty of Social Sciences

University of Lapland

1. Introduction

How can a resistance based on Martin Heidegger's critique of metaphysics contribute to

contemporary conceptions of biopolitics? Some of the currently most prominent

conceptions of biopolitics are those suggested by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben.

Considering that addressing this question minding the work of both authors at once would

be outside the scope of a single essay, the present one will focus on the conceptions of the

former. This entails departing from the central relevance of neoliberalism, as Foucault

analysed neoliberalism as a general frame of biopolitics in his most explicitly contemporary

contribution, suggestively titled The Birth of Biopolitics(Foucault 2008). This essay moves

through a detour from the notion of biopolitics to engage with neoliberalism. This allows to

recur to Mikko Joronen (2013) for an account of contemporary subjectification, biopolitics

implicitly comprised, and its relation to the ontological dimension of neoliberalism;

drawing from Foucault and Heidegger. It then recurs to an earlier work by Joronen to

explore an account of resistance that corresponds to the ontological dimension of

neoliberalism, Next, it engages with Stuart Elden (2003) in highlighting Foucault’s

relations to Heidegger both in ontological concerns, and in the distance to the project of a

fundamental ontology. Further on, it is argued that Joronen's reading neglects relevant

specificities of Chicago School neoliberalism. This, together with Elden’s argument, allows

a reappraisal of The Birth of Biopolitics. Finally, possible consequences of the reappraisal

for Joronen’s general argument are drawn as conclusions, suggesting problems for further

discussion and insinuating loose ends that may lead to place the most relevant aspects of a

resistance based on Heidegger for neoliberalism, biopolitics, and beyond.

2. Ontic and ontological dimensions of neoliberalism

Neoliberalism has been analysed in all its variegations as modes of formation, production,

encouragement or government of co­constitutive bodies, selves, subjectivities, self­control,

citizenship, institutions, cities, regions, states, particular governmental rationalities,

globalisation, new spaces, everyday life. These multiplicities of ontic events and

transformations, with all their ambiguous nuances, multiple outcomes, unpredictable

events, hybrid forms, mutated outcomes would be on the epiphenomenal ground of

neoliberalism. However, some similarities or parallelisms can be noted; because of an

ontology of nature, life and social existence risen out of an ontological drive constitutive of

neoliberalism. A violent mode of revealing named enframing that operates through 1

gigantic calculative machination. Enframing orders being as entities, including things,

natural resources, individual conducts, human capabilities; rendering them an available

array of standing reserves; for competition in terms of market value, calculative efficient

managerialism. (Joronen 2013, 356­358, 363). This description explores how Heidegger’s

works can contribute to Michel Foucault’s on neoliberalism, The Birth of Biopolitics

(Foucault 2008). With such exploration, Joronen seeks to take a step further previous

1 Joronen uses the term enframing (2013) and thus it will be used in this essay. Elsewhere enframing is used as roughly coextensive with machination (2013, 358; 2011). For a discussion on the use of these terms, and the preference for machination under certain purposes, see Joronen (2008).

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considerations of relations between Foucault and Heidegger, which have not thought

altogether ontology, enframing, and neoliberal governmentality (2013, 358).

A decisive aspects of this reading of Foucault’s account of neoliberalism is the homo

oeconomicus; a modality of self­controlling subjectivity. Previous iterations of liberalism

related to subjectivity in terms of exchange in the natural space of the market; mostly, as a

worker, exchanging labour power for wages, a partner of capital. But neoliberal self is

defined as human capital, a usable reserve of individual genetic and acquired qualities. This

capital is its own source of earnings within artificial spaces of competition. Accordingly, it

is to operate by an internal rule of efficient maximization of profit, a framework of

calculations of cost and benefit in order to efficiently maximise profit. Where any end,

whether related to creative industries, carbon economy, colonialism, forest conservation,

globalisation, science, mischief, or any cultural and material setting, can be defined as

profit. Thus neoliberal ethics appear as value neutral or nihilist. Neoliberal subjectivity is

self­production and self­optimisation of human capital through value­free calculations for

maximization of any profit; hence atom of interest and entrepreneur of itself. (Joronen

2013, 359­361). For the sake of this essay, what is most remarkable in Joronen’s reading, is

that the rule of efficient maximization of profit is not only internal, but internalized

specifically by humans: “What thereby separates the enframing of human reserves from the

non­human ones is our capability to be both the target of calculation as well as the ones

capable of calculating [...] ontologically challenged to challenge themselves” (2013,

361­362).

Aside from the homo oeconomicus, the central problem of neoliberalism is the craft of

spaces of competition. That requires defense from excessive state intervention and

monopolies. But because the spaces are taken as artificial, certain styles of intervention are

required as well. This entails material processes of ordering that allow predictable certainty

in governing entities; joint with certain organization and exercise of powers. The latter

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might adopt the form of the making or reform of the neoliberal state, which turns to be an

intersection between mechanisms of subjectification, internalized rules of maximum

economy, techniques, identities, visibilities, institutions, administrative practices, legalities,

and global movements of capital and competition. Such intersection governs individual and

popular behaviours . But rather than sovereign or disciplinary exercises that entail 2

dominance, territoriality, direct control; the neoliberal ethos of government prescribes

interventions on conditions of the rationality of behaviours. Sovereignty or disciplinarity

are not erased but combined into neoliberal strategic programming. (Joronen 2013, 357,

359­360, 362­363). If, for instance, ontic violence grounded on neoliberalism occurs (see

Joronen 2013, 368); accordingly it would be rationalised as a negative incentive and the

most efficient intervention available.

Thus different and even opposing spatialities and rationalities (Joronen 2013, 367) would

be the artificial habitats of competition and benefit maximization of thehomo oeconomicus.

It is here that the insights on empirical realities reached by Foucault would end, falling

short on the explanation of the operational logic constitutive of the real as such. (Joronen

2013, 362). The different and even opposing rationalities and spatialities of competition

would all be grounded on a uniform plane of existence, flattened of the same level of

available standing reserve. Addressing the ontological dimension of neoliberalism, or what

Joronen names ontological mono­politics, would begin by interrogating the constitution of

this uniform and flat plane as the real (Joronen 2013, 359, 362, 367­368). At this point,

Joronen draws on a heideggerian argument from Agamben, regarding the combination of

powers. It is based on the relation between constituted and constituting forms of power, and

the respective concepts of actuality and potentiality. Neoliberalism would work as a

2 This is what can be termed the biopolitical dimension of neoliberalism, if biopolitics is understood as the biologic, demographic, medical, economic, urbanistic problematization of phenomena that emerge at the level of masses of the human species, often in combination with individualizing mechanisms (Foucault 1978, 139, 141; 2003, 243­243; 2008, 21, 317; 2009, 474). Hence neoliberalism is a frame of biopolitics, but is not entirely biopolitical. For an alternative and broader formulation of a power to foster life or make live see Foucault (1978, 138; 2003, 239, 254) or as a power of extermination see Foucault (2003, 276).

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condition of possibility for the actualisation of constituted powers, for instance sovereignty

and disciplinarity; as a political ontology, constituting the historical regimes of power as the

real. But it would not be fully actualised, to an extent remaining a concealed potentiality.

However, a more fundamental potentiality would itself be concealed by neoliberalism: life,

as the inexhaustible potentiality to ground new modes of life, allowing while opposing all

forms of power (2013, 364). Here the argument of Agamben and Heidegger would differ, 3

as for Heidegger life is merely a mode of being and revealing. Joronen, however, points to

the fruitfulness of locating pure potentiality in life. (2013, 365).

Heidegger’s work assists mainly the analysis of the violence of ontological mono­politics,

and an outline of ontological resistance (Joronen 2013, 365­368). But before proceeding to

violence and resistance, it might be worthy to consider that Joronen refers to the ontological

mono­politics of neoliberalism as a modality of enframing (2013, 360).What is meant by

this? Enframing is a mode of revealing that emerged historically when modern techniques

for controlling nature were extended to humans. Thus humans were demanded to order

themselves and nature as standing­reserve. Standing­reserve means the array made

available to manipulation. This availability came to be through characteristics such as

predictability, producibility, usability. For this to happen, order had to become an end in

itself. This drive for ordering turned self­strengthening, because any limit, rather than

contending the drive itself, was faced with the will for more optimal orderings. (Joronen

2013, 358, 360­362, 367). Enframing could then be characterised as manipulation grounded

on a self­strengthening drive for nihilist ordering; or as Joronen similarly does, as gigantic

calculative machination (2013, 370; 2011). And Heidegger points to enframing presenting

itself as the single mode of revealing (1977, 32); hence ontologically monopolistic (Joronen

3 After discussing Agamben, Joronen uses the term biopolitics: “biopolitical techniques, which have taken life itself as the target of ontological politics” (2013, 365). If by life itself is meant an inexhaustible potentiality, concealed by and more fundamental than a political ontology, it is hard to see how the problematization of the population might be on play. One could speculate that while demography is concerned with the phenomena of population, risk analysis could have a comparable relation to a politics over fundamental potentiality. For the sake of analytical accuracy, it could be advisable to use a term different than biopolitics, as to differentiate from the inflection mentioned in note 2., perhaps, along Joronen, ontological politics (2013, 365).

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2013, 364­368). As a modality of enframing, all of the former characteristics extend to the

ontological politics of neoliberalism.

It is now time to analyse violence and outline resistance. The violence of enframing,

including the ontological mono­politics of neoliberalism, operates through three

mechanisms: monopolisation, and oblivion of finitude and open being. The first is

particular to enframing, when presenting itself as the single mode of revealing, it violently

monopolises all revealing, and thus conceals the possibility of other modes. The second and

third extends to all modes of revealing, which conceal their own finitude as particular

events of appropriation of the inexhaustible openness of being, concealing as well this

fundamental abundance. This three violent concealments suggest three ways of resistance

to ontological violence. First, enframing can be resisted by minding the possibility of other

modes of revealing. Second, it can be resisted too, as well as any other mode of revealing,

by minding their finitude as events of appropriation. (Joronen 2013, 365­368). Third, by

attunement to open being; possibly through a new event of appropriation, with awareness of

its finitude as such, a concealing­revealing glance into the fundamental openness. None of

these ways guarantee nor completely rule out engagement in changing things themselves,

such as activism, disobedience, protests; but merely ontic change could leave the ontologic

untouched, a violent relation to things intact. (See Joronen 2013, 368; Joronen 2011).

3. Heideggerian resistance

The essay now seeks to enrich the outline of heideggerian resistance that has been reached.

A relevant difficulty of resisting ontological violence is that it cannot be done by willing

resistance. It does not matter whose, or how well programmed or revolutionary. Willing

resistance might easily extend such violence. Thus heideggerian resistance is more related

to letting the openness prior to acts of a subject be; letting be. This letting be is not an end

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in itself, a total nihilism, it is merely a part of a broader resistance specific to ontological

violence (see Joronen 2011, 1139­1147).

The first form of the letting be, is letting enframing be. However, as the concealments are in

place, letting enframing be requires delineating its finitude, letting the finite event and its

distressing absences to be seen, remembering the openness of being. These are active

moves of unconcealment; active refusal and rejection of, and release from, actual and

further violent concealments; and pursuit of a glance into an unframed world. Because of

the gigantic and monopolistic qualities of enframing, a completely other and new beginning

of the concealing­revealing happening of open being is granted by it . At this point 4

delineating finitude suffices because enframing is already a finite event, merely a

happening of the openness of being that already rules (see Joronen 2011, 1139­1147).

There is a second form of letting be, non­violent dwelling. For that matter delineating is

insufficient, it enables, but does not grant. Non­violent dwelling is the active release from

the human being given by enframing. It is the attunement to the openness of being, that

avoids willing its restoration into other violent dispositions, and allows the own mode of

being to be played and transformed by open being. Even though dwelling requires some

intelligibility, it regards the non­violent character, the awareness of its finitude. That is,

awareness of the concealing­revealing nature of some intelligibility in relation to open

being, its imperfections, the possibility of and passing to other modes of dwelling, its

coming to an end; and taking what springs forth from the abyssal ground of some

intelligibility, while allowing the unfamiliarity with which it has been received (see Joronen

2011, 1139­1147).

4 This point, which will be contended onwards, is clearly stated by Heidegger himself: “It is precisely in Enframing, which threatens to sweep man away into ordering as the supposed single way of revealing, and so thrusts man into the danger of the surrender of his free essence­it is precisely in this extreme danger that the innermost indestructible belongingness of man within granting may come to light, provided that we, for our part, begin to pay heed to the coming to presence of technology” (Heidegger 1977, 32).

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Because of the inexhaustibility of the openness of being, and the necessity of some

intelligibility, concealing­revealing cannot happen all at once in a vacuum. It takes place

through a seemingly limited self­emergence of things, in unframed time­spaces, in sites.

Within this approach, earth is not a planet, but abyssal ground of the sites. Even in its

enframing as a planet, earth defiantly points lacks that lead to the failure of enframing and

any other violent mode of revealing; for instance through the looming environmental

catastrophe. Non­violent dwelling sets abyssal earth in power andfollows its leading strings

through sites; through finite sites that preclude any chauvinism. While enframing, because

if its gigantic and monopolistic qualities, reveals the real as homeless; non­violent dwelling

is a homecoming, though not to a secure ground, but to homelessness in the foreignness of

earth (see Joronen 2011, 1139­1147).

Thus the enriched outline of heideggerian resistance: delineate finitude to enable,

experience it through so enabled dwelling, and follow the situated leading strings of earth.

This is how to leap to the new beginning granted by enframing, or to resist the violence of

other modes of revealing.

4. Historical ontology and archaeology

The essay now turns to contend some of Joronen’s arguments; seeking to reappraise

Foucault’s work on neoliberalism. The main elements of contention are the reading of

Foucault’s work as solely occupied with empirical realities, and the neglection of the

specificities of Chicago school neoliberalism: “What Foucault’s insightful focus on empiric

realities of liberal and neoliberal governmentalities – the techniques, rationalities, forms of

visibility, and formation of identities implemented in Germany between 1948 and 1962 as

well as presented in the thoughts of the Chicago School of Economics – fails to fully

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explicate is the operational logic constitutive [...] for the revealing of the real as such”

(Joronen 2013, 362). This section tackles the first element of contention.

Elden argues that in spite of how Foucault’s genealogies have been appropriated, they can

be better thought as historical ontology. What defines genealogies as historical ontology is

their archaeological component. Archaeology analyses how discourses work as conditions,

not of validity, but of possibility for statements (énoncés), as historicala priori (2003, 196,

197). Joronen refers to neoliberal state as an extension of enframing, as an ontological

setting instead of an ideological or discursive turn grounded on political practices (2013,

356­357) , as if ideologies and discourses were given on the same ground already set by 5

neoliberal enframing. But in the archaeological sense, discursive practices integrated as

knowledge (savoir), are the ground on which institutions, practices, knowledges

(connaissances), ­one might add ideologies and discourses in Joronen’s sense­ are possible.

Savoir, ontological knowledge, is a set of historical conditions which allow an object to be

given to connaissance, to a subject­object relation and its rules (Elden 2003, 197) of which

valid ­rule compliant­ knowledge or science is a part. Heidegger too makes a distinction

between ontic knowledge, the sciences that examine entities; and ontological knowledge, of

which the question of being takes part in its endeavor to ascertain thea prioriconditions of

the former (Elden 2003, 192­194, 197).

Elden hints at, but does not fully develop, a tension between Heidegger and Foucault when

the latter articulates archaeology to genealogy. Because while for Foucault genealogy is a

complement to archaeology that analyses circular relations ­of, for instance, production,

support, induction, extension­ between ontological knowledges and powers (Elden 2003,

198, 202); Heidegger, specially in his early works where the project of a fundamental

5 Oddly Joronen lists this article of Elden in his references (2013, 368, note 8)

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ontology is at hand , and one might add in Joronen’s reading, takes ontological knowledge 6

as a series of epochs in the concealing­revealing of a fundamental openness of being ­or

later an abyssal absence­ that grounds history (See Elden 2003, 192­194; Joronen 2011,

1128, 1132, 1134, 1135, 1139, 1149, 1149­1150 note 3) . This tension aside, the point is 7

that Foucault, far from focusing solely on empiric realities, extends the historical aspects of

Heidegger’s ontology, in continuity to the latter’s later works (Elden 2003, 201­202).

5. Subjective economic analysis

This section focuses on the neglection of the specificities of Chicago School neoliberalism 8

in Joronen’s reading; rather than on a detailed reading of the archaeological dimension of

Foucault’s work. The neglection, though, is not just relevant for the account of this type of

neoliberalism, but for the wider argument of Joronen. The neglection occurs when Joronen

takes homo oeconomicus as a reductive and internalized anthropology (2013, 359, 9

360­363, 366). However Foucault refers to thehomo oeconomicusnot as the human subject

itself, but as an interface between it and the neoliberal exercise of power (2008, 253). He

supports this point by explicitly telling that this does not mean that every subject is an

economic man, or that the whole subject is considered homo oeconomicus, or an

anthropological identification of any behaviour as economic behaviour; plus he stresses the

importance of minding that economic analysis does assume the point of view of the subject,

6 A comparable argument has been made that contemplates Agamben as well, regarding the tension of Foucault’s approach with the project of fundamental ontology, but it does not account for the turn in Heidegger’s thought. (Lallement 2012) 7 Joronen states this point, which will be contended onwards, in the clearest way: “...calculative machination does not just signify a mere historical destining of Western thinking, but an exposure of the entire “Westernising” of the planet through a series of metaphysical epochs culminating in the ontological violence exposed by the global forces of economic and technological manipulation” (2011, 1135). 8 This term has been prefered over american neoliberalism to avoid any evocation of a national essence or territorial boundary to generalized economic analysis. Though it would be more accurate to name it American Enterprise Institute neoliberalism, as this type of analysis was created in this institution, before the Chicago School (see Foucault 2008, 247). 9 See the quote on page 4.

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but only inasmuch as its behaviour is intelligible as economic behaviour (Foucault 2008,

251­253).

Truly the domain of intelligibility of generalized economic analysis insofar as it assumes

particular points of view, what might be termed subjective economic analysis, is wide,

encompassing behaviours without regard of their formerly more relevant moral nature or

degree of normalization, without regard to whether individual or collective, or even without

regard to the way they are experienced. For instance it may assume the point of view of the

drug pushers regarding their choices of different prices for different types of consumers; the

society pondering the costs of criminality and law enforcement, the degree of criminality it

can accept, or the most efficient style of governmental action regarding a specific type of

crime; the mother in feeding the child, analytically assumed to do so in exchange for

satisfaction as a mother, or the marriage analytically assumed to adopt a general contract to

avoid transaction costs of particular contracts (see Foucault 2008, 243­246, 248­260).

But the action is partial and environmental, rather than an exhaustive internal subjugation;

because generalized economic analysis does not seek to extend any particular

subjectification, or to understand social processes, but to conduct an always­inefficient

governmental action (Foucault 2008, 246­249, 255­256, 259­260, 286). The purely

analytical nature of the rule of maximum profit is made evident in that it arguably even

reaches beyond living beings. The domain of intelligibility of subjective economic analysis

is any non­random response to environmental variables (Foucault 2008, 269). Of course

this may address the efficient conduct of any action in environments of any scale (see

Foucault 2008, 270); but the internal relation of the point of responsiveness, any random

response, or simple unresponsiveness are left unavailable.

On the point of the concern for ontological knowledge pursued through archaeology, what

has been advanced raises differences with Joronen’s reading. A discussion of the ontology

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of Chicago School neoliberalism should begin by noting the field of generalized economic

analysis is any non­random response to manipulation of environmental variables. It is a

science of the efficiency of this manipulations, addressed to the always clumsy practices of

government. By which savoir or historical a priori, is certain connaissance or frame of

subject­object relations made possible, so that generalized economic analysis of

non­random response to environmental variables tells scientific truths to government? By

addressing this problematic is that the archaeology of Chicago School neoliberalism begins.

This essay merely tries to draft some considerations in that direction that tend to suggest

reassessment of Joronen’s argument.

The unavailability of the internal relation of the point of responsiveness, of interest, is not a

marginal element, but of central importance for posing a proverbial invisible hand that

translates the pursuit of interest into a totalized good, on the condition that the totality as

such remains unavailable as well and thus total interest cannot be pursued. Then,

unavailability of interest and of totality as foundations of the economic rationality that runs

through liberalism (Foucault 2008, 272­286).

Because of the unavailability of the totality, liberal critique poses the desirable relation of

the government to market as passive recognition of its evidence and protection of its inner

logic (see Foucault 2008, 291­313, 318­319). This contests the very existence of the

government, which is then justified, as well as contested, on the grounds of a domain that

encompasses and exceeds the economic domain and the irreducibly heterogeneous legal

domain, namely civil society. Civil society has an analogous structure to the economic in

that the interest that leads to association is unavailable as well as the totality. The

unavailability of social interest poses civil society as an always present constant. Though

not a­historical, as it has different recurrent phases, in a movement guaranteed by the play

of the dissociative forces it also contains, along with the associative. But the dissociative

forces also mean that civil society does not extend to humanity, but remains a bounded

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community. Within the field of society the precise meaning of the unavailability of the

totality is both its bounded nature and its recurrent historical phases. Thus one could pose

that, because of the structure of its unavailabilities, civil society has its constant­historical

temporality and bounded subjectivity. The analogous structure and the play that includes

dissociative forces is what allows civil society to shelter the market. It also grants the

spontaneous emergence of power relations that opens the problem of the legal, and its

heterogeneous subject characterised by a renunciation to the legal sovereign; not as

foundation of society within liberalism, but as a possible element, the discussion being

whether is necessary or not. The governmental action is thus object of critique in all these

intersecting yet irreducible domains and the subjectivities that characterise them.

Nevertheless notably, because of the unavailability of economic and social totalities, as

well of economic and social interests, the always excessive existence of government cannot

be an end in itself, and is justified only if lead by the interests of its social and economic

subjects, and the rights of its legal subjects (see Foucault 2008, 291­313, 318­319). Hence

conditions for generalized subjective economic analysis are laid.

All of this was made possible by multiple breaks without an immediate relation, such as the

critique of physiocracy, of contractualism, or of 18th century reform in punishment.

Moreover, the arrangement was subverted by variations in liberal government rationalities

such as nationalism; where the state was to exercise its subjective interest, given as well the

unavailability of the totality and of particular interests. Or radically opposed by different

government rationalities such as state planning, justified on a universal history that

progressively reveals its truth, as in marxism (see Foucault 291­313, 318­319).

The Chicago School neoliberal form of the former arrangement came to be specifically

through opposition to the New Deal, to wartime state planning, and to postwar

socioeconomic programs. Then Ordoliberalism and Chicago School neoliberalism differ in

the events to which they responded. But also in the nature of the response, the former

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supposed the fragility of the markets and posed the problem of the legal and institutional

framework necessary to artificially produce them. In contrast the latter analytically

extended economic rationality to knowingly and irreducibly non­market phenomena (see

Foucault 2008, 317­323). That was done through subjective economic analysis, which does

entail governmental action ­permanently criticized nevertheless­ through mechanisms

rationalised in economic terms in all the former domains, but does not aim at a total

economisation of the social and the legal, or at an internalization of this rationality by social

or legal, or even economic subjects.

Whether this fits the real and ontological nature of liberalism, or is the best way to readThe

Birth of Biopolitics, is beyond the reach of this essay. But what has been advanced allows

to affirm that Joronen’s reading, and recourse to Heidegger, are not a mere complement to

Foucault’s account or viceversa, but instead a significant transformation of the latter.

6. Conclusion

This section interprets and summarizes what has been advanced and draws general

consequences for Joronen’s argument.

Joronen draws from Foucault to point that neoliberalism entails an internalization of the

rule of efficient maximization of profit by humanity, and an ethos of government

strategically committed to environmental interventions for the construction of spaces of

competition, even if incorporating on the tactical level other types of power. By this

Foucault describes merely ontic realities of neoliberalism, such as its manner of governing

the population. However, the operational logic that currently constitutes a uniform and flat

plane of competition and profit maximization as the real, is an ontological mono­politics of

neoliberalism. Former forms of power are actualised by these mono­politics’ potentiality,

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while concealing a fundamental openness of life or being. Ontological mono­politics of

neoliberalism is a modality of enframing; a violent mode of revealing characterised by

gigantic calculative machination, which is our epochal metaphysic constitution.

Facing the ontological violence of enframing entails a letting be. Which comprises

delineating the finitude of enframing, or any mode of revealing, as an event of a particular

appropriation of the openness of being. It also comprises non­violent dwelling, enabled but

not granted by the former. Such dwelling is an attunement with the inexhaustible openness

of being, aware of its finitude as a mode of dwelling. It follows the happening of being at

finite time­spaces (sites); by following the leading strings of abyssal earth through such

sites, earth being the absent ground of the sites, and thereby setting it in power. In this way,

the ontological violence of enframing (ontological mono­politics of neoliberalism

included), or possibly any mode of revealing, can be resisted. And particularly in the case

of enframing, as an epochal, gigantic, monopolistic mode of revealing, resisting its violence

grants a leap into a wholly other and new beginning of the happening of being.

However the first contention with the former lies in the methodological aspects of

Foucault’s approach, especially archaeology, show continuity with Heidegger’s late project

of historical ontology. A tension remains in the point of the genealogical aspect of

Foucault’s approach, in that the ontological knowledge is analysed in terms of its circular

relations with power relations, rather than as a revealing­concealing of a fundamental

openness of being or fundamental grounding in abyssal absence. Reading Foucault as

merely occupied with ontic realities, as to articulate his work with a theory of Heideggerian

resistance, misses the continuities as well as the incompatibilities of his methodological

approach compared to Heidegger’s, and thus radically transforms Foucault’s analyses.

The second contention with Joronen’s argument lies in Foucault’s account of Chicago

School neoliberalism. The human internalization of rule of efficient maximization of profit

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is not an objective, a condition, a tactic or an effect of Chicago School neoliberalism. Nor

the intelligibility of subjective economic analysis is tied to humanity, reaching something

less and much more, but notably not everything. Nor the addressee of this analysis is

humanity or even the neoliberal state as such; it is governmental action ­at the most any

intervention capable of modifying variables in any environment intending to elicit a

non­random response­ and it never properly internalizes the aforementioned rule. The

possibility of generalized economic analysis, and more broadly liberal economic rationality,

does not lie in an internalization of any rule, but rather on unavailability of the internal

relation of subjects, of interest. This unavailability, coupled with the unavailability of the

totality of the economic process, allows not only liberal economic rationality, but

arrangement along non­coextensive transactional realities and fields of intelligibility such

as the legal and the social, each with its subjectivities, temporalities, and governmental

rationalities. Subjective economic analysis does entail governmental action through

mechanisms rationalised in economic terms in all fields, but does not aim at a total

economisation of the social and the legal, or at an internalization of this rationality by social

or legal, or even economic subjects.

This account means that within Chicago School neoliberalism the rule of efficient

maximization of profit is not necessarily internalized by economic subjectivity, much less

social or legal subjectivities; or that the analytical plane of competition is necessarily

translated into ontic rearrangement of the social or the legal. The unavailabilities of social

and economic interests and totalities, conditions of possibility for the aforementioned

analysis, would be incompatible with the gigantic and monopolistic qualities of enframing,

as they would leave room for other modes of revealing. That the target of generalized

economic analysis is the always inefficient governmental action, contesting its very

existence, is hard to pair with the calculative machination qualities of enframing; as it

highlights the insufficiency of manipulability not for the sake of itself, but on the grounds

that ultimately it cannot accommodate manifold subjective interests that are to be served.

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If enframing is not the case, or is not totalized as epochal, then the hope of a wholly other

and new beginning becomes problematic. Generalized economic analysis would be the

effect of a discourse with a complex genealogy of many discontinuities, rather than the

culmination of a series of metaphysical epochs destined from the beginning. Instead of a

constitution of the real as such by an epochal logic, the case would be the constitution of

transactional realities along discursive and non­discursive practices. Either as modes of

revealing, or as discourses, plural ontological constitutions would have to be faced.

Arguably archaeology and genealogy would be methodologies for delineating the finitude

of such constitutions. And this leaves no reasons to dismiss that delineating finitude is not

enough, but that it has to be experienced. Regarding biopolitics, as an articulation of

discursive and non­discursive practices constitutive of the processes of population, it is here

where the delineation and experience of finitude as human species might be most suitable.

The insight offered by Foucault’s account would suggest the insufficiency of experiencing

the finitude of human being, calling instead for a plural experience of finitude of at least

legal, social and economic subjectivity. Whether finitude is experienced by dwelling, or

dwelling necessarily is an attunement to open being or to any other ontological foundation

(such as the potentiality of life), or is ontologically non­violent, would be outside the scope

of archaeology and genealogy. But the historical ontology of ourselves that integrates

archaeology and genealogy was not the only overarching theme explored by Foucault.

Besides further exploration of the problems already outlined, a discussion of heideggerian

dwelling, and foucauldian aesthetics of existence as insinuated in the late works and

interviews, might prove fruitful.

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References

Elden, Stuart. 2003. Reading Genealogy as Historical Ontology. In Alan Rosenberg and

Alan Milchman (eds) Foucault/Heidegger: Critical Encounters. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, pp. 187­205.

Foucault, Michel. 2009. Security, Territory, Population. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society Must Be Defended. New York: Picador.

Foucault, Michel. 1978. History of Sexuality Volume 1 ­ An Introduction. New York:

Pantheon Books.

Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New

York & London: Garland Publishing.

Joronen, Mikko. 2013. Conceptualising New Modes of State Governmentality: Power,

Violence and the Ontological Mono­politics of Neoliberalism. Geopolitics. Vol. 18, No 2,

pp. 356­370.

Joronen, Mikko. 2011. Dwelling in the Sites of Finitude: Resisting the Violence of the

Metaphysical Globe. Antipode. Vol. 43, No 4, pp. 1127­1154.

Joronen, Mikko. 2008. The technological metaphysics of planetary space: being in the age

of globalization. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Vol. 26, No 4, pp.

596­610.

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Lallement, Maxime. 2012. Foucault’s Biopolitics: A Critique of Ontology. Journal of the

British Society for Phenomenology. Vol. 4, No 1, pp. 76­91.

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