The exercise of friendship as an insurrection against neoliberal biopolitics

This essay proposes to problematize the practice of friendship by Michel Foucault as a piece of resistance to the neoliberal way of life. To this end, the text is organized from the discussions produced by Foucault on friendship as a way of life and a political exercise of resistance to a governmental power, and the discussions on neoliberalism in Birth of Biopolitics. It therefore seeks, with the help of commentators on Foucault's work, first to present neoliberalism and its main pleasure: the competition. It then discusses the notion of friendship for Foucault within the framework of the care of the self and epicureanism in order to discuss friendship as a political practice and, as such, an exercise of resistance to neoliberalism, since it is an ontological practice about ourselves, in opposition to the entrepreneurialism of the self and competition, with the final considerations emphasizing the inventions and art of existence that friendship provides.