Die Freiheit der Frauen und gesellschaftlicher Fortschritt. Feministinnen, der Staat und die Armen bei der Schaffung neoliberaler Gouvernementalität

Abstract

Abstract

This paper explores the claim that neo-liberalism is much more than a program of socio-economic policies; it is the new rationality of government, and it is coextensive with state formation and congruent with capitalism’s present phase. Relying on an approach influenced by Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality, and by recent attempts to rethink the state in cultural terms, the paper offers a feminist reading of cultural political transformations in Chile. The paper reconstructs the recent history of feminist involvement in institutional transformation in that country’s social sector, exploring both discourses and practices in bureaucratic settings. It argues that an earlier feminist preoccupation with the personal empowerment of women, which was part of women’s emancipatory struggles, as been reconfigured — with the collaboration of feminists — as techniques and strategies for producing gendered, rational, entrepreneurial actors who are functional to Chile’s present development strategy. This amounts to making empowered citizens out of poor women in a broader context of re-regulation of society along the lines of a neo-liberal rationality of government.