[amazon_link id=”140398655X” target=”_blank” ]The Birth of Biopolitics[/amazon_link] by Michel Foucault has been rather heavy going. I can get through two or three of the essays each time. It’s obviously going to be worth going on, though. The early section on Germany is intriguing. The book argues that its post-war reconstruction in the absence of a functioning state made economic order – on a “neoliberal” model – absolutely fundamental to what Foucault calls its “governmentality” or how people are governed. Often it’s said that the pre-war hyperinflation accounts for Germany’s particular economic obsessions, but there is surely something in the post-war disorder too that explains the particularities of the German economic model – and its inflexibility, if it’s indeed so existential for the state.

[amazon_image id=”140398655X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979: Lectures at the College De France, 1978-1979 (Michel Foucault: Lectures at the Collège de France)[/amazon_image]

Anyway, all the good stuff on economics itself is yet to come. Meanwhile, I was tickled by this picture which appeared on Twitter of the use of Foucault to advertise polo neck jumpers.

Stylish?