Preliminary Thoughts on Left Governmentality

Abstract In the manufactured politics of crisis that we see increasingly in many societies around the world, the question of what politics can overcome the impasse of so-called democratic rule, which serves as a cover for the domination of liberal oligarchies, has become urgent. Mining the most radical elements in Foucault's thinking about governmentality, this essay seeks to imagine a politics of left governmentality that would evade the pitfalls of left populism.