The government of desire: A genealogy of the liberal subject
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The government of desire: A genealogy of the liberal subject Miguel de Beistegui, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2018, 320 pp., ISBN 9780226547374 Contemporary Political Theory (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-019-00329-9
In a time where our desire is solicited and titillated in all areas of life, ranging from food, pornography, data-mining companies, and self-help books, Miguel de Beistegui’s analysis of how desire has been constitutive of the modern liberal subject seems more imperative and prescient than ever. As desire and its neverending quest for fulfillment is identified as characteristic of our contemporary condition, the author questions how its omnipresence in our everyday life came to be. The book thus echoes trends in sociology, political science, and anthropology, questioning the naturalness of emotions, their historical developments, and their political relevance in relation to (neo)liberalism. Taking up Michel Foucault’s own underdeveloped claim that ‘Western civilization is the civilization of desire’ (Foucault, quoted on p. 3, emphasis in original), de Beistegui enjoins us to consider that far from being natural, desire might ‘have emerged at a particular time and under specific historical circumstances’ (p. 3). Desire, he insists, ‘defines who we are today in ways that we are not always aware of’ (p. 3). Therefore, the author claims, its emergence and evolution should be carefully examined to grasp how it permeates our lives. The contemporary human, de Beistegui posits, is essentially ‘a man [sic] of desire’ (pp. 12–20). Through a genealogical inquiry, the author argues that the contemporary ‘man of desire’ governs himself through three main normative regimes: sexuality, political economy, and recognition/self-love (pp. 21–24). The book’s three sections – homo oeconomicus, homo sexualis, and homo symbolicus – follow the distinction between these regimes. Each section documents the emergence and shifting dominant meanings of desire inside a specific regime, and how they render specific modes of (self) governance possible. This presentation not only helps the reader understand how desire plays out in different domains, but it also greatly nuances the genealogical account of desire in each of these spheres. The book should be praised for presenting Foucault’s thoughts on governmentality, liberalism, sexuality, and biopower in a clear and accessible way. Chapters on 2019 Springer Nature Limited. 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory www.palgrave.com/journals
Review
homo oeconomicus are especially compelling at presenting how desire came to enter the field of economic governmentality and to be identified with the norms of interest and utility (p. 34). These chapters convincingly argue there is nothing natural about ‘self-interest’ and the ‘truth of the market’: de Beistegui introduces us to other ways of considering desire, moving from Aristotle and the Greeks to Machiavelli and Botero, and from Locke to Bentham and Polanyi. These conceptual changes in key canonical
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