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(2008) The birth of biopolitics, Dordrecht, Springer.
LAST WEEK I TOUCHED on the theme of homo ceconomicus which has permeated economic thought, and especially liberal thought, since around the middle of the eighteenth century. I tried to show how homo ceconomicus was a sort of non-substitutable and irreducible atom of interest. I tried to show that this atom of interest could not be superimposed on, was not identifiable with, and was not reducible to the essential characteristics of the subject of right in juridical thought; that homo œconomicus and the subject of right were therefore not superposable, and finally that homo œconomicus and the subject of right are not integrated into their respective domains according to the same dialectic, that is to say, that the subject of right is integrated into the system of other subjects of right by a dialectic of the renunciation of his own rights or their transfer to someone else, while homo œconomicus is integrated into the system of which he is a part, into the economic domain, not by a transfer, subtraction, or dialectic of renunciation, but by a dialectic of spontaneous multiplication.
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Senellart, M. , Ewald, F. , Fontana, A. (2008)., 4 april 1979, in M. Senellart, F. Ewald & A. Fontana (eds.), The birth of biopolitics, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 291-316.
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