Hayek Program Podcast Mark Pennington on Foucault’s Lessons for Liberal Political Economy
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Jul 23, 2025 Mark Pennington, a Professor of Political Economy at King’s College London, delves into the intersection of Foucault's theories and liberalism. He argues that Foucault’s insights on self-creation and biopolitics align with liberal concerns about social control. They discuss the implications of disciplinary power, technocratic policymaking, and the importance of pluralism. Pennington also highlights how incorporating humanities perspectives can enhance understanding in political economy, urging a more robust engagement with identity and creativity.
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Self-Creation Mirrors Hayekian Agency
- Foucault's freedom centers on self-creation: agents can remake themselves within discourses.
- Pennington links this to Hayekian situated agency and entrepreneurial capacity to reshape institutions.
Prisons Illustrate Mobile Techniques Of Control
- Foucault used prisons as his central example to show surveillance and classification molding identities.
- He argued panoptic techniques migrate into schools and hospitals, narrowing scope for self-creation.
Disciplinary Power Versus Biopower
- Foucault distinguishes disciplinary power (targeting individuals) from biopower (targeting populations).
- Biopower uses expert narratives and statistics to normalize societies and limit freedoms at scale.
