State Phobia and Civil Society

Mitchell Dean is Professor of Public Governance at the Copenhagen Business School and Professor of Sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Kaspar Villadsen is Professor of Management, Politics, and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School.

• Introduction1. State and Civil Society2. Empire Without State3. Politics of Life4. Saint Foucault5. Blood-Dried Codes6. The State of Immanence7. Virtual State-Making8. When Society Prevails9. Political and Economic Theology10. Foucault's Apologia of NeoliberalismConclusion

"This important book will stand as a milestone in Foucault studies and social and political theory more generally."—Sanford Schram, Hunter College "This strong and timely work is a valuable corrective to many of the excesses of Foucault scholarship that have emerged and taken root in recent decades."—Jeffrey Bussolini, City University of New York "Dean and Villadsen cleverly interrogate the ambiguities of Michel Foucault's writing on the devolved power of the state to the local sites of surveillance and control. Arguing against these academic fashions, they restore the centrality of the state to social and political theory. State Phobia is a timely investigation of the state in a period of austerity packages, welfare cuts, pension restrictions and admonitions to citizens for self-maintenance."—Bryan S. Turner, The Graduate Center, CUNY "State Phobia addresses what I consider the most urgent issue of the contemporary Left: how to deal with state power? Traditional Social Democracy comfortably played the parliamentary game, Stalinist Communists imposed ruthless dictatorship, while the New Left demonized the State and imagined direct non-representative democracy. The recent experience of Syriza in Greece has made it clear how difficult it is for the "radical" anti-statist Left to exercise state power in a way that is different from Social Democracy or Stalinism. Dean and Villadsen convincingly demonstrate that the anti-statist attitude must be abandoned: instead of dreaming of 'overcoming' the state, we must learn to use it in a new way. I can only describe State Phobia in terms usually reserved for bestsellers: un-put-downable, a cause of sleepless nights."—Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana "Dean and Villadsen help us to understand that Foucault sees neoliberalism not as political program but rather as a framework, a useful 'governmentally' which might prove capable of limiting existing state techniques of subjugation."—Daniel Zamora Vargas, Contemporary European History