The Critical Genealogy of Market-Justice Relation In Neoliberal Governmental Rationality

Author

Yasouj University

10.22034/jeds.2026.71779.1934

Abstract

Introduction: The crisis of social justice in modern societies is not just a consequence of resources misallocation but also rooted in fundamental transformation of 'Governmental Rationality'.The present article, by applying the 'multilayer critical genealogy' of power-knowledge apparatus based on Foucauldian approach, tries to critically analyze the relation between government, market and justice.
Methodology:This research draws upon the method of “multilayered critical genealogy”. Based on this method,the following steps have been covered:first, the reconstruction of the layers of power-knowledge apparatus by their genealogical order;second,structural alignment of co-level layers and their correlative analysis; third,discovering the gaps and possibilities of rearrangement in the transition from the existing apparatus.This analytical sequence ensures that transitional proposals are presented not normatively,but as the necessary outcome of the internal analysis of the dominant power-knowledge configuration.
Results:This paper, by autopsy of the neoliberal apparatus at four levels of governmental rationality, social relations, governmental techniques and subjectification, argues that out of the current reductionism situation requires a renewed revival of jurisdiction. In this alternative rationality,the market is transformed into a limited tool in the setting of external norms (human dignity, fundamental rights and social life) to open the way for the invention of 'new forms of life' and social solidarity outside the monopoly of self-interest calculation.
Conclusions:This research indicates that neoliberalism, not merely as an economic policy, nor solely as an ideology,but as a governmental rationality,has caused a paradigm shift from the jurisdiction (rights-based) to market veridiction (interest-based).The market, from a site for realizing justice, has become the locus for determining truth and its ultimate authority.In this process, judicial institutions and legal systems have been emptied of their normative and ethical content and reduced to instruments for regulating,legitimizing, and disciplining the self-operating logic of market competition.Furthermore,the subject of the rights-bearing 'homo politicos' is reduced to the interest-bearing 'homo economicus'.

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