Readings of state and health neoliberal government

Abstract

Brazilian Public Health has often analyzed neoliberalism as a phenomenon of emptying the role of the State and a threat to public and universal health. Taking Foucault's governmental thought as a subsidy, we discuss neoliberalism as a profound metamorphosis, not only of the State, but of health production. As a permanent update of liberalism, the neoliberal government changes the boundaries between public and private and produces new forms of normality, risk and subjectivity, progressively subordinate to the truth of the logic of the economy and the market. This economic rationality creates new ideals of health, inspired by management techniques of corporations, and produces new biological, sanitary, psychological truths. Restricted to “successful self-entrepreneurs”, health may become a moral and economic choice in relation to individual behavior and risk, making the State not responsible and creating a type of economic citizenship devoid of solidarity. However, the game around non-corporate health institutions and practices remains open. It is up to us to question the “responsible” and “safe” life forms that were invented for us and to develop other governmentalities that are less excluding and unequal compared to those that we have naturalized and practiced.