Global turn from neoliberal to post-neoliberal governmentality and contours of the new normal

The article discusses global changes in the practices and ideology of govemmentality following the recession of the neoliberal “wave”. Characteristic features of post-neoliberal govemmentality are identified: the rejection of economic priorities; the continuation of the previously outlined line of depolitising citizens; de-legalisation, i.e. the displacement of legal norms by “technical” regulation; globality; the strengthening of biopower. The techniques of govemmentality, which seeks to take control not only of people’s bodies but also of their thoughts and emotions, are being perfected. An important innovation is the gradual transformation of civil society into a means of disciplining the population. The state, too, has not stopped inventing new technologies of exclusion, whose development was stimulated by the emergency regime of the pandemic era. The new normal is characterised by the state machine’s perception of every individual as a potential source of danger. The approaches to conceptualising post-neoliberal governmentality proposed by various political theorists are considered. The author considers the concept of depolitisation of the citizen and policisation of the state proposed by Agamben and developed by his followers, including Russian ones, as the most promising for interpreting the new normal. Using Agamben’s metaphor of destituent power, the author argues that the world is witnessing an increasingly explicit removal of the supreme power from fundamental political decision-making by the state apparatus. Destituent power is a manifestation of the power of the state machinery, which makes the state of emergency the new norm and deprives the sovereign of real authority, i.e. dismantles supreme power itself. As a result, the ruling bureaucracy is in fact usurping sovereignty, which the author sees as a very dangerous trend, fraught with a new totalitarianism. The final part of the article examines the alternatives offered by political science to the global triumph of post-neoliberal governmentality, and the author concludes that none of the theorists has so far managed to formulate a convincing and realistic programme for getting out of the negative scenario of global political development. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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