Between the Homo Oeconomicus and the Homo Criminalis: Neoliberalism, Punishment and Regimes of Subjectivation

Abstract

The article addresses the processes of neoliberal subjectivation in the field of punishment and criminalization. We first reconstruct M. Foucault's argument regarding the transformations promoted by neoliberalism in the context of punishment and its correlated modality of subjectivation. We argue that his prognosis regarding the future of normalizing institutions, such as the prison, turned out to be, in part, historically mistaken. We then proceed to explore the central argument of the article, namely, that in the past three decades, political technologies and forms of subjectivation in the sphere of punishment have been marked by reciprocal support between neoliberal and other disciplinary and sovereign mechanisms. To this end, we conduct a theoretical-analytical discussion based on empirical examples from countries such as the United States and Brazil. We aim to contribute, thus, from the sociology of punishment, to the contemporary discussion regarding the confluence between neoliberalism and authoritarianism.

Keywords

• neoliberalism; punishment; authoritarianism; neoliberal rationality; government of insecurity.