Unraveling Power: Foucault’s Transition from Pastoral to Neoliberal Governmentality

Abstract

This article examines, from a Foucauldian genealogical perspective, the transformation of forms of governmentality from Christian pastoralism to contemporary neoliberal rationality. Through a critical reading of power technologies —discipline, biopolitics, and security—the authors argue that these do not represent successive stages but rather coextensive rationalities that operate in tandem within the formation of modern government apparatuses. The central hypothesis is that neoliberal governmentality does not constitute a rupture with pastoral logic but rather a secularized reformulation of it: Neoliberalism inherits and reconfigures the structure of pastoral power, replacing spiritual salvation with economic self-realization, under the imperatives of freedom, competition, and self-exploitation. The analysis draws on seldom-discussed primary sources in Foucault’s thought, including Omnes et singulatim and lectures that supplement his courses at the Collège de France, as well as contemporary critical literature in Spanish. This articulation makes it possible to understand how neoliberalism produces subjectivities that, in the name of freedom, internalize norms of performance, efficiency, and individual culpability—thereby perpetuating a more subtle and effective logic of subjection.