This essay investigates possible benefits of using Michel Foucault’s theories to understand how subjects constitute themselves as consumers. Foucault’s analysis of the neo-liberal notion of homo economicus, a subject of individual interest and an entrepreneur producing its own satisfaction, is discussed in relation to contemporary consumption.

The essay departs from the hypothesis that Foucault’s diverse theory of subjectivation can bridge over opposing but equally limiting description of consuming subjects offered by Marxism and liberalism. Building on Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics and the ethics of the later Foucault, the possibility of liberation from dominance, offered from opposing positions by Marxism and liberalism, is challenged. From the perspective of Foucault, subjects are constituted in relations of power that always involve freedom, understood as the individual subject’s ability to participate in and influence these relations. Further, these relations are intertwined with games of truth, certain rationalities that are linked to institutions of power. This essay argues that the neo-liberal “truth” of consumer choice structure contemporary relations of power that are integrated parts of the subject, for good and worse. For the later Foucault’s ethics, as well as his critique, dispute the extent to which we are governed, and urge us to practice freedom.