Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T22:50:32.779Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Security

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2023

Charles Devellennes
Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury
Get access

Summary

The challenge now, he [Macron] said, is ‘to build a form of neoprogressivism, structured around the ideal of individual progress for all, in a way that combines agility with security… We have to rethink the framework, and undertake an ideological renovation. It will happen. We need to show the way.’

Pedder 2018, 101

The need for security is an essential component of Macron’s ideological thought, so much so that it has surpassed the need for freedom that liberalism is renowned for being founded on. Liberalism had been the ideology of laissez-faire par excellence, but Macron’s neoliberal outlook demands the cultivation of the value of security above and beyond that ultimate freedom to do business. In order to provide security, neoliberalism has fully embraced the power of the state to create markets and economic structures that liberalism once thought to be natural. Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the rise of security as a core value of society. Where liberty was once the cornerstone of liberal ideology, security is the new value promoted by neoliberalism. By analyzing the thought of Michel Foucault, who was writing on security in the late 1970s precisely as the neoliberal state was becoming a reality, we will see that this new value is articulated in the form of new technologies for the management of populations. Describing security as the contemporary deployment of techniques of power, Foucault identifies key features that shed light on the contemporary application of these techniques. Using examples of the architecture of the town, the control of state-sponsored markets, and the management of epidemics – all of which played an essential role during Macron’s time in power, Foucault argues that the rise of security is a key aspect of contemporary politics. Although Foucault does not phrase it as such himself, it is the rise of the liberal, and then the neoliberal, state that is at stake in the deployment of these technologies of security. By focusing on the town, economics, and health policy, we see three distinct areas where this state has established itself as the primary provider of techniques to deal with problems of the industrial and post-industrial eras.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Macron Régime
The Ideology of the New Right in France
, pp. 39 - 59
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Security
  • Charles Devellennes, University of Kent, Canterbury
  • Book: The Macron Régime
  • Online publication: 17 June 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529227116.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Security
  • Charles Devellennes, University of Kent, Canterbury
  • Book: The Macron Régime
  • Online publication: 17 June 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529227116.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Security
  • Charles Devellennes, University of Kent, Canterbury
  • Book: The Macron Régime
  • Online publication: 17 June 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529227116.003
Available formats
×