Rođenje biopolitike

The Birth of Biopolitics is a collection of Foucault's lectures delivered at the Collège de France in the academic year 1978–1979. The book represents one of the most important parts of his later work and a key text for understanding contemporary forms of power.

Here, Foucault shifts the focus from classical discipline and biopolitics (which he developed in his previous lectures Security, Territory, Population) towards economics and political rationality. He analyzes in detail the emergence of liberalism and especially neoliberalism (German ordoliberalism and American Chicago neoliberalism – Hayek, Becker, Friedman). He shows how neoliberalism changes the very nature of governance: the state no longer governs directly, but creates the conditions in which the market becomes a general form of rationality that permeates all spheres of life (the economization of society).

Foucault's analysis of homo oeconomicus as a new subject – man as the entrepreneur of himself, who behaves as capital that needs to be constantly invested and valorized. The lectures show how the biopolitics of the 20th century is transformed into the biopolitics of the entrepreneurial man.

The style is typically Foucaultian: precise, historically rich, and surprisingly current. Although these are lectures, the text is extremely readable and clearer than some of his books.