Lecture “Affektive Gouvernementalität. Politik und Geschlecht im Neoliberalismus”

The new attention towards emotions and affects can be understood as a dimension of the neoliberal governmentality, as speaking about emotions, as a praxis of being affectes as well as institutional arrangement of emotions, not least in the working world. Novel reasons of civic rights and a new situation of the citizens within the democracy are linket with it. In line with the neoliberal subjectivation affects are – following Foucault – new techniques of “leadership” and the “governance” of people. On one hand, affects institutionalise new techniques of power into humans, that is to say the subjection under new forms and requirements of the organisation of life, of living together and of working under neoliberal conditions. On the other hand, affects as technique of governing and as a mode of (political) subject building are a source of possible forms of resistance to “not-wantig-to-be-governed-like-this” (Foucault 1990) and of new forms of solidarity. These connections should be picked as a central and empirical deepened in the lecture.