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Filozofski vestnik | Volume XL | Number 3 | 2019 | 133–144
* Psychoanalyst, Department of Social Psychology, University of São Paulo, Brazil 
In the scenario of the last elections in Brazil, a series of disturbing phenomena 
came to light: the polarization of the Brazilian population into two large blocks, 
the dissemination of verbal and physical violence, the naturalization of preju-
dice, segregation and exclusion. We witnessed the contempt for reflection and 
debate as ways of reconciling differences. In its place, a kind of legitimacy of ver-
bal and physical aggression against those considered as incarnations of moral 
and sexual corruption of order, family and economic progress emerged. Finally, 
it is worth emphasizing the presence of a leader with authoritarian attitudes 
and discourses, often contradictory, with homophobic, misogynistic and racist 
statements, with Manichean narratives capable of mobilizing the masses and 
who ended up winning the elections by popular vote: the Captain Jair Messias 
Bolsonaro. His name and rank were in perfect continuity with the military and 
religious references of his campaign. 
Conservatism and moralism as differential elements that weighed on the popu-
lar vote seem to be a disturbing nostalgia for the period of the Brazilian military 
dictatorship. Hannah Arendt, presents the book The Origins of Totalitarianism, 
as an attempt to answer the questions of her generation before the horrors of 
the Second World War: – What had happened? How could that have happened? 
(Arendt, 2000, 339, 340). For example that the function of the intellectual is to 
try to respond to the “current”, that is, to what is presented as incomprehensible 
in society. This paper is a reaction, an attempt to understand at least a part of 
what is going on in this current mass mobilization. 
In 1976 Michel Foucault published a short text on how the political function of 
the intellectual had changed over the XX
th
 century
1
. This change is illustrated 
by him with two different types of intellectuals based on their relation to poli-
1
 Michel Foucault, “La fonction politique de l’intellectuel”, Dits et Écrits. II, 1976–1988, Gal-
limard, Paris 2017, p. 109–114.
Nelson da Silva Junior*
The Politics of Truth and its Transformations in 
Neoliberalism: the Subject Supposed to Know 
in Algorithmic Times 
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nelson da silva junior
tics. In the late XIX
th
 century, and until the 2
nd
 World War, the intellectual was a 
free and morally engaged subject that embodied the universal conscience. They 
would not be confounded with other also educated people whose occupations 
implied scientific knowledge, such as the physician or the engineer. Instead, 
they had, in general, an education in law, and used to pronounce their opin-
ions and were heard every time social issues, discussions on universal and hu-
manist values, such as justice, crimes, and their proper punishment would ap-
pear. The mid-XX
th
 century brought about another kind of intellectual, the one 
Foucault calls the specific one, who was heard for their knowledge on specific 
matters, mostly on technical issues and whose effects would concern everyone, 
like atomic energy and its risks. Contrary to the universal one, the specific in-
tellectual is specialized and has deep knowledge of a few objective problems. 
However, this limited knowledge is precisely what supports their opinion when 
general problems come about. This change was the result of the development 
of technological structures that brought about a new form of political power 
whose agents were the scientists. 
 Foucault’s approach to truth is inspired by Nietzsche’s critique of western ideal-
ism. That means that truth is not considered as a transcendent and/or absolute 
reality. On the contrary, truth is thought of as a radically worldly and contingent 
social creation, inseparable of power and political thrives historically situated. 
In this sense, every society, according to Foucault, has its general politics of truth: 
the types of discourse that it accepts as true, its mechanisms and ways to dis-
tinguish true and false statements, techniques and procedures to achieve truth 
and also the status of those who are allowed to say it. In our society, the political 
economy of truth is historically marked by five traits: the scientific discourse is 
the legitimate form of truth; truth is constantly demanded and used by politics 
and economy; truth is abundantly diffused and consumed; it is mostly produced 
under the control of large political and economic institutions like Universities, 
the Armed Forces and so on, and finally truth is in the core of political debate 
and social confrontations
2
.
This description may still appear valid today, for scientists and universities con-
tinue to be considered the most legitimate agents of truth discourses. Their pro-
ductions still arouse high interests within the political and economic domains 
2
 Ibid., pp. 112–113.
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the politics of truth and its transformations in neoliberalism
and are more than ever object of extended diffusion, of consumerism and high 
pitched social debates. Nevertheless, I would like to draw attention to the fact 
that the political regime of truth of our society has undergone important changes 
since Foucault’s text. This was due not only to something Foucault didn’t have 
access to, namely the advent of the internet but mostly to its intertwined func-
tioning within the neoliberal politics throughout the word. 
First, the production of truth is no more exclusively under the control of uni-
versities and state institutions. Private corporations have since extended their 
funds to R&D, fostering a knowledge production very precisely tailored to their 
market needs. The diffusion of research achievements and or its failures has 
also changed, however in opposite directions. On the one hand, with the ad-
vent of the internet, scientific knowledge seems to have been finally rendered 
accessible to everyone on the planet. Indeed, one could say that we live in an 
unprecedented time of democracy of truth. On the other hand, the diffusion 
of knowledge has gradually become more akin to the diffusion of advertise-
ment, both because of its simplified language form as well as its consumption 
enhancing role. In this sense, the traditional social agents endowed with the 
discourse of truth, such as scientists and universities, were also affected by the 
same economic logic that shaped scientific truths. They don’t speak for them-
selves anymore, for their testimony is no longer a free one, and their opinion 
is requested only under heavy market constraints. They are invited only as le-
gitimizing actors, such as film stars are called to support the sale of products. 
Now, this doesn’t mean that the specific intellectual has become just a puppet 
at the service of marketing professionals. They still have the essential task of 
producing effective and complex technologies. In other words, they are still 
responsible for the production of truths. It is their legitimizing and diffusing 
role on truth matters that has changed. First, they have lost the privilege of 
giving the last word on the matters of their domain. For, not only has the inter-
net become an almost infinite source of instant knowledge, but also the digital 
environment offers a myriad of different points of view opposite to theirs. This 
entails perhaps what can be considered as the most important change in the 
truth regime of our society: with so much information, with such contradictory 
material, it is now up to the consumer to decide what can be considered true or 
cannot. The current legitimizer agent in the new economy of truth of our society 
is, in fact, the common man himself. 
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Compared to the specific intellectual, the common man does not produce 
truths, but he usually decides what facts and ideas he will believe to be true. 
Another difference is that his knowledge domain is not a specific one like the 
former’s, but rather a universal one. Finally, there has been a contrary move-
ment in what Foucault names the “rarefaction of truth” in his description. This 
expression is, in fact, a very literal one: by that he meant the scarcity of oc-
currences of statements commonly held as true in our society. Whereas these 
occasions were then sparse, for they depended on the acknowledgment of a 
few number of respected researchers, these circumstances became currently 
inflated, incessant and widespread, since everyone is now endowed to discern 
the truth. 
But, the digital environment out of which the common man drags his knowl-
edge is not the natural field of his own experience. Far from it, and due to the 
highly developed algorithmic technology, this environment is carefully and 
thoroughly controlled. This means that the common person, the internet user, 
is split into a double situation: on the one hand, he acts freely and chooses 
the trustworthiness of each information he has access to without noticeable 
constraints. On the other hand, the environment from where he acquires his in-
formation sets is the result of a precisely designed and personalized process of 
selection. Here we are faced with an indirect form of power: the power over the 
possible actions of the other. This kind of individualized power in our society 
was interpreted by Foucault as a pastoral power, an expression that was chosen 
after the kind of control that was developed by the early Christian monastic 
tradition. Digital technology became a powerful political tool in the neoliberal 
economy since it enables the shepherding of large numbers of well fit and cus-
tomized free individuals. To properly fathom how this personage appears and 
engages in the new truth regime of our society, we can start with a comparison 
with his predecessor, the mass media traditional receiver. 
This will allow us to discern the more general structures of this new technology 
and its application to the pastoral modality of power, whose first diagnosis was 
made by Foucault. If the common man is artificially elevated to the new subject 
supposed to know in neoliberalism, it is first necessary to understand how this 
occurs, and then to think about what this reveals of the general strategy of pow-
er in neoliberalism.
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the politics of truth and its transformations in neoliberalism
The mutation of pragmatics in media: from the passive mass to the 
free individual
Mass communication grew exponentially throughout the twentieth century due 
to the technical advances with extended reach and/or high capacity of reproduc-
tion. Marshal McLuhan, for example, had already spoken of media transforming 
the planet into a global village back in the 1970s. Although this expression has 
become truer nowadays, since communication networks have spread a much 
finer mesh around the globe, two very different functions of communication are 
at play in each of these moments. A radical change occurs in the logic of com-
munication with the advent of new technologies like personal computers, the 
internet, and smartphones.
In traditional media channels, such as radio, television and print newspapers, 
the same information was bound for all. The transmitting device was essentially 
dynamic concerning a mass of static viewers, fixed recipients of an incessant 
flow of information. This structural passivity of the viewer can be considered as 
the mark of his submission in the logic of mass media since he is powerless to 
interact with the information to which he has access. Now, in the Internet en-
vironment, both the device and the user are essentially dynamic. This may give 
the impression that the viewer is less passive in this context, but, in fact, he is 
in an even more unfavorable relationship than before concerning his freedom 
of interaction with the information he receives. This apparent contradiction be-
tween user dynamics and their unfavorable position becomes clearer if we think 
that the current media devices are active computer programs. Such programs 
provide new information to the user from an algorithmic analysis of the breaks 
in their search patterns. Thus, an unusual search for airline tickets on Google 
will produce the emergence of dozens of on-screen tour packages. In this way, 
the user experience is that of a comfortable anticipation of the world to their in-
terests. The user’s freedom, however, is far less than that of the television view-
er; for it is precisely in their innovative actions, in the changing of their pursuits 
and interests that the user contributes to their mapping and isolation in new 
sets of possibilities of action. 
The modalities of social experience that this new information technology offers 
can no longer be understood in the old paradigm of mass communication. In the 
latter case, the same message was transmitted simultaneously to a large number 
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of people, mobilizing affections and thoughts in unison. Currently, the plural-
ity of web television unites people in segmented groups, producing aesthetic 
affinities in a much more specific manner. The most powerful instruments of 
social interaction nowadays are undoubtedly social media. Through Facebook 
and Instagram, everyone can have the sensation of seeing and being seen by 
everyone else. However, this overall experience is biased. The groups, to which 
each user is invited to belong to, follow, in their constitution, the same selec-
tion logic that information technology uses in drawing their profile. One of the 
effects of this type of grouping is the collective legitimating of the information 
received by the user, leveraging the persuasive effectiveness of any information. 
Another effect is that of a progressive isolation between different clusters since 
the informations to which each group has access to are hardly accessible to oth-
ers. Not only is there no discussion between opposing segments, but they are 
isolated and have no access to the same information nor the same fake-news, 
facilitating group constitution in opposition to others, in the well-known logic 
of narcissism of small differences
3
.
Another particularly effective aspect of emotional appeal completes this process 
in the relationship between leaders and their interlocutors, namely, the creation 
of an apparent closeness between leaders and followers. Trump, for example, 
broke ground in a new method of communicating with the population by using 
Twiter. Jair Bolsonaro, on the other hand, privileged Whatsapp in his commu-
nications with the population during his election campaign and this style has 
been continued throughout his government. Statements, which in traditional 
politics would be considered as “protocol breaks”, are a specific style of govern-
ment made through communication. The voter’s or citizen’s experience tends to 
be an intimate one with their leader, which in turn legitimizes the truthfulness 
of the leader’s statements. By comparing the information they receive directly 
from their leader with those they receive through traditional means of commu-
nication, disagreements tend to be systematically interpreted as manipulation 
made by the opposition. The discrepancy of information within the media it-
self is thus integrated with the practices of intentional disinformation known 
as fake-news. The periodic disrespect of the leader for institutions also gains 
space in this ambiance. Indeed, the rise of the hero begins precisely with their 
3
 Sigmund Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, Studienausgabe, Fisher Taschenbuch Ver-
lag, Frankfurt-am-Main 1982, Bd. IX.
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the politics of truth and its transformations in neoliberalism
contempt for the situation. This technique proves to be very effective, despite 
disrespectful statements being systematically followed by denial of the same. In 
this case, the effect of the contradictions is not mistrust, but something closer 
to what Orwell described in his critical parable to Soviet totalitarianism, the 
“doublethink”. In analytical terms, the psychic defense at stake is that of refusal, 
whose ultimate formalization is the statement: “Yes, I know, but still ...”
As described by Freud, the circle of truth closes around each group and its leader. 
Within the groups, identifications are reinforced by the exclusion of threatening 
differences and also by the creation of new enemies. However, something else is at 
stake, namely the participation of technical instruments in this process of produc-
ing groups, simplifying truths and reducing discursive logic to simple negations. 
This technical element did not exist until recently in mass communication. The 
algorithmic production of a specific information set for each individual and simul-
taneously for their groups, calls for a new conceptual approach to the type of pow-
er at play, different from that used by the traditional means of communication.
The pastoral power, the other side of bio-politics
Let us begin with the singling out of the control actions on each individual. 
According to Foucault, this is not a recent technique in the practices of power. 
Regardless of the high degree of technological refinement at play in social net-
works and media today, its origin can be found in the model of the shepherd and 
their flock employed by the Christian monastic tradition. 
Foucault underlines the differences between the form of collective government 
according to the pastoral power and that of Greek politics. The polis’ govern-
ment was impersonal in the sense that the ruler was replaceable over time. In 
the case of pastoral power, the government implies a maximum individualiza-
tion: the shepherd is responsible not only for the flock as a whole but for each 
sheep. For this reason, the pastor of Christian souls must know the thoughts 
of every one of their believers: “it is not possible to exercise this form of power 
without knowing what goes on through people’s minds, without exploiting their 
souls without forcing them to reveal their innermost secrets”
4
. 
4 
Michel Foucault, “Le sujet et le pouvoir”, (1982) Dits et Écrits. II, 1976–1988, Gallimard, 
Paris 2017, p. 1048.
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Foucault considers that the principles of pastoral power are perpetuated in the 
bio-political management of populations by public policies (health, security) 
and by private institutions. He goes on to coin a neologism, governmentality, to 
describe the articulation of generalized with individualized control of the pop-
ulation. Governmentality ins the “set of institutions, procedures, analyses and 
reflections, calculations and practices that allow to exercise this very specific, 
although very complex, kind of power that has as its main target the population, 
[which has as its main knowledge form,] the political economy, [and] as its es-
sential technical instrument, the security devices”
5
. 
Our society, more than any other, would be characterized as a complex combi-
nation of “individualization techniques and totalization procedures”
6
. Foucault 
once referred to this combination as “truly demonic”
7
. The advent of pastoral 
techniques in the algorithmic universe of social media was not witnessed by 
Foucault. Through them, the technology of pastoral power has reached levels of 
articulation of totalizing social management procedures that are probably more 
demonic than those of his time. It can be understood that the totalizing proce-
dures of our time are those of neoliberalism. Of course, governmentality accord-
ing to Foucault is not limited to the neoliberal way of population management, 
which is only its present form. But we are immersed in this form and it uses the 
pastoral power that it has available in its best interest. The updating of the pas-
toral power on the internet articulates with surprising perfection the principles 
of totalization of the neoliberal project to which it is associated. 
Currently, neoliberalism is characterized by two aspects. Firstly, the questioning 
of the idea that   the State is an unquestionable necessity, which marks its differ-
ence with the previous form, grounded on the idea of State as an end in itself. 
Secondly, it promotes the logic of maximizing benefits and reducing costs as a 
universal principle of action of political reason. These two aspects of neoliberal-
ism are homologous to the idea that subjects be radically free. Gary Becker, the 
Nobel laureate in economics, argues that any human behavior should always be 
5 
Michel Foucault, (1977–1978) Sécurité, Territoire, Population, Cours au Collège de France, 
EHSS/Seuil/Gallimard, Paris 2004, p. 111.
6
 Foucault, “Le sujet et le pouvoir”, p. 1048.
7
 Michel Foucault, “‘Omnes et singulatim’: vers une critique de la raison politique”, Dits et 
Écrits. II, 1976–1988, Gallimard, Paris 2017, p. 966.
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the politics of truth and its transformations in neoliberalism
considered as a “rational choice between excluding objectives having the maxi-
mization of objectives as a goal”
8
. 
 
However, Becker does not problematize the set of choices available to this so-
called free subject. A closer analysis of this set would easily demonstrate that in 
the end, it is a tightly controlled freedom. For example, in the case of the algorith-
mic functioning of the new social media, the irreconcilable objectives offered to 
the rational choice of individuals are subject to a refined control. The same could 
be said about the individual’s rational choices in the world today. Thus, the ra-
tionale of an apparent paradox of neoliberalism can be seen, namely that of be-
ing simultaneously, a theory of social management based on individual freedom 
and one that places itself as totally compatible with authoritarian and violent 
governments, as clearly shown in Pinochet’s “inaugural experiment” in Chile. 
Language as the possible field of action of subjects
 
The Foucauldian perspective of neoliberal governmentality stresses precise-
ly this: power relations can only occur with subjects who act as if they were 
free. Since the advent of bio-politics, Foucault says, governing has become a 
way to structure the possible field of action of others, both present and future
9
. 
This implies defining ‘devices’, ‘frames’ ‘environments’ and norms in which hu-
man beings will understand themselves as free. Therefore, the specificity of the 
performative project of neoliberalism in the set of forms of governmentality is 
made clear. No one evidenced this more than Margaret Thatcher when she stat-
ed: “Economics is the method, but the goal is to transform the spirit”
10
 (Harvey, 
2013, 32). In other words, if the goal is the conduct of each individual’s action 
within the general conduct of the population, this depends on considering and 
educating each individual as a free and rational subject in face of their choices. 
By controlling the discursive, legal and moral framework of the subjects consid-
ered as units of cost-benefit analysis, it is possible to say that the devices of ne-
oliberalism are forms of production of subjectivities that work at an ontological 
8
 Gary S. Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, The University of Chicago 
Press, Chicago 1990, p. 5.
9
 Foucault, “Le sujet et le pouvoir”, p. 1055.
10
 David Harvey, Neoliberalismo: História e Implicações, Ed. Loyola, São Paulo 2013, p. 32.
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nelson da silva junior
level. In effect, as precisely underlines Laval, this “is not primarily an ideology. 
It is, above all, a technology of power”
11
. 
To conclude these reflections, I would like to highlight a few points for further 
discussion. The first point concerns a transformation in the discursive strategy 
of domination, which begins to work essentially in the field of pragmatics. The 
rhetoric of authoritarian leaders and, to use a particularly happy expression 
proposed yesterday by Ian Parker, their “calculated stupidity”, remains funda-
mentally the same as described by the founders of the Frankfurt School.
Horkheimer and Adorno saw in Freudian psychoanalysis a strong ally in the un-
derstanding of advertising in culture and politics. In his empirical research on 
anti-Semitism, Adorno broadened the interpretations of the Freudian mass psy-
chology, and described new rhetorical elements: the small great man, the low-
ering of inhibitions, the nobility of sacrifice, the indetermination of the cause to 
be defended, the limitation of argumentation to repetition to a restricted group 
of clichés, etc.
12
It should also be remembered that Adorno differentiates with surgical precision 
the psychoanalytic approach and the sociological interpretation itself in the un-
derstanding of the mass phenomenon. For him, even though there is always a 
spontaneous propensity for fascism in all the masses “the manipulation of the 
unconscious is indispensable for the updating of its potential”. Thus, Adorno 
maintains that “fascism as such is not a psychological problem. Fascism only 
“defines a psychological area that can be successfully exploited by the forces 
that promote it for reasons of self-interest”.
13
Adorno understands such an appropriation of psychoanalytic concepts by the 
cultural and political industry as an anesthetic of the “revolutionary potential 
of the masses”. Considering that psychoanalysis aims to emancipate the subject 
from the heteronomous laws of the unconscious, Adorno describes the cultural 
industry as a kind of “reverse psychoanalysis”. He, therefore, reaffirms the rel-
11
 Christian Laval, Foucault, Bourdieu et la question néolibérale, Éditions La Découverte, Pa-
ris 2018, p. 42.
12
 Theodor W. Adorno, “Teoria freudiana e o padrao da propaganda fascista”, in: Ensaios 
sobre psicologia social e psichoanalise, Editora Unesp, Sao Paulo 2015.
13
 Ibid., pp. 185–186.
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the politics of truth and its transformations in neoliberalism
evance of the Freudian theory of power, as well as the efficacy of the semantic 
register in which it is in force. But he also includes it in a broader dimension of 
language, properly pragmatic, where the technology of communication insti-
tutes forms of power capable of absorbing and using in its favor the concepts of 
psychoanalysis, annulling its critical potential. 
In my view, the approach of this form of domination from the Foucauldian 
point of view confirms Adorno’s shift to the pragmatics in the interpretation of 
the mass mobilization phenomena. But, his conceptual tools go even further in 
the importance of a reflection on power from the point of view of language as 
an element that precedes the subjects. Language is the socializing environment 
par excellence, and as such, it is also within this possible field that subjects and 
their actions can be better controlled. According to Foucault, the main object of 
his work was to try to “produce a history of the modes of subjectivation of the 
human being in our culture [in other words,] the modes of objectification that 
transform human beings into subjects”
14
. In this sense, he considers discours-
es, disciplines, and practices as essentially performative forces of knowledge 
and power that socialize subjects by objectifying them. This way of transform-
ing human beings can be seen as being on different grounds from rhetoric and 
persuasion. In the modes of subjectivation, subjects and their consciousness 
are thought of as the effects of discourses, disciplines and practices, devices 
fundamentally open to historical contingency. In other words, the Foucauldian 
perspective, based on an essentially pragmatic approach to discourses, sug-
gests that an analysis of power in the neoliberal key emphasizes a properly per-
formative level of its functioning, where language precedes subjects and their 
social relations. 
This allows us to conclude by emphasizing the centrality of language in a criti-
cal view of alienating discourses and their techniques. Syntax, semantics, and 
pragmatics can be seen as a contour capable of tracing differences in forms of 
power that are reached by language and which not only persuade and are a 
part of but that constitute subjects and social relations. Power in neoliberal 
governmentality is not only updated by a semantics centered on the paternal 
figure, following the Freudian hypothesis on mass psychology, nor in a syntax 
of instrumental reason of planetary dimensions, as shown by the Frankfurtian 
14
 Foucault, “Le sujet et le pouvoir”, p. 1042.
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school. It infiltrates more subtly into the structures of language that define the 
essence of subjects and their social relations.
The second point that I suggest for the discussion concerns the transformation 
of the politics of truth under the neoliberal regime by elevating the common 
man to the place of the supposed subject to know. After the universal intellec-
tual, after the specific intellectual, truth is today legitimized by the common 
man. But this is not achieved simply through a mere rhetorical conviction of the 
common man of his intellectual excellence. On the contrary, his ascension to 
the place of supposedly knowing subject depends on a refined control of the so-
cial structures of recognition of his new position, that is, of his most immediate 
discursive environment. As Foucault affirms, it is a truly demonic technological 
evolution, capable of articulating total forms of management, of biopolitical 
amplitude, with individualized forms of surveillance, which silently conduct 
their conclusions, guaranteeing their impression of autonomy and discovery. 
Now this privileged access to the truth produced no longer by rhetorical per-
suasion, but by the performative character of pastoral power has its price. The 
main difference, from the point of view of discursive interactions, is that rheto-
ric admits what might be called a logomachy, this is a war of words, where the 
opponents legitimately recognize themselves as such. Already in the perform-
ative moment of domination, the common man, duly elevated to the place of 
knowing, feels that he must protect the truth without submitting to such a war 
of words. Not by chance, the information they get about the world and society 
always takes the same form: “You were being deceived”. In 1973, in his seminar 
on The Psychiatric Power, Foucault demonstrates how truth in medicine pro-
gressively passes from a revelation regime, that is, from a sporadic event to a 
demonstration regime. Now, in the algorithmic domination of neoliberal poli-
tics, truth as demonstration is again reabsorbed in the regime of truth as revela-
tion. The experience of knowing the truth of the common man is not separable 
from that of having been deceived, which allows us to consider this knowledge 
as essentially paranoid. Indeed, aggressiveness thus begins to mediate social 
relations around the holding of truth. It is no accident that the revisionism of 
history and the denialism of the spherical geography of the earth are points of 
honor for the new subject supposed to know, since in paranoid knowledge, all 
that is common sense, all established knowledge must be put under suspicion. 
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