Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality refers to new forms of modern states, a new form of rationality which includes not only judicial power not only processes of governance and domination by others but which also points to techniques of the self to govern oneself. While Foucault did include implicitly the perspective of gender and sexuality in his concept of governmentality, this paper suggest that the notion of feelings and “affective governmentality” might open Foucault’s concept for a feminist perspective. The paper will contextualize the concept of affective governmentality in two developments, the neoliberal transformation of governance and states and the formation of “cognitive capitalism” (Moulier Boutang 2011), based on knowledge, communication and creativity. Both processes lead to the growing importance of affects in the labor process and in the political organization of societies and, hence, do impact on gender relations and the construction of gendered identities.
