The Linkage of the Neoliberal Power-Knowledge System: A Case Study of Thatcherism

In this study, neoliberalism has been studied as a phenomenon resulting from the rupture in the Keynesian liberal power-knowledge system. Then, with the genealogical method of the neoliberal knowledge system, Thatcherism represents a prototype of the necessary connection between the neoliberal power-knowledge system. For this purpose, the dialectical theoretical framework of the power-knowledge system has been adopted. After intensive examination of the foundations of the neoliberal knowledge system, the political philosophy of neoliberalism has been addressed by dealing with ordo-liberalism and the idea of the social market on the one hand, and the Chicago school as new economic Imperialism on the other. Finally, the necessary connection of this neoliberal system of knowledge/episteme with the system of power finds itself in Thatcherism. The fundamental question in this research is to discover the foundations that led to the rise of neoliberalism and can be found in Thatcherism and Reaganomics as the political machine of this dominant institution. Thus, following the roots of neoliberalism as restructured capitalism in the dialectical theoretical realm of the power-knowledge system and its political manifestation in practice, the present paper follows this articulation under Thatcherism. For this purpose, following the principles of Foucault’s theory of knowledge-power; Foucault’s method of genealogy has been used to understand the lineage of the neoliberal system of knowledge, and a kind of radical hermeneutics is used to understand the outlines of neoliberalism in the formulation of its power-knowledge system called Thatcherism.