How Michel Foucault, drugs, California and the rise of neoliberal politics in 1970s France are all connected
In May 1975, Michel Foucault took LSD in the desert in southern California. He described it as the most important event of his life which would lead him to completely rework his History of Sexuality. His focus now would not be on power relations but on the experiments of subjectivity, and the care of the self. Through this lens he would reinterpret the social movements of May 68 and position himself politically in France in relation to the emergent ant-totalitarian and anti-welfare state currents. He would also come to appreciate the possibilities of autonomy offered by a new force on the French political scene that was neither of the Left nor the Right: neoliberalism. Mitchell Dean is Professor of politics and Head of Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) and formerly professor of sociology at Macquarie University (Sydney) and the University of Newcastle. He is author of the bestselling Governmentality, a title that has been cited in the first edition of Foucault's lectures and the Oxford English Dictionary.
