The homo oeconomicus and the state of exception

Abstract

The homo oeconomicus concept that Foucault introduces us in The birth of biopolitics has an economic logic he uses to act in the world and with another people, for which it deserves a special attention in this article. The search for personal satisfaction directs the homo oeconomicus in such a way that politics itself is seen like a means to become true with his most private interests. The relation I see between homo oeconomicus and the idea of exception from Agamben tries to show, in this primary moment of the research, that the homo oeconomicus is capable of analyzing the exceptionality of a government like an apparatus to obtain positive results in his economic logic. The state of exception and the homo oeconomicus are liable to an interaction that results in a way to think politics where violence and suspension of the legal order become tools to the confection of particular wishes.