semi-automatic waffle

The “centaur state” is one of Loïc Wacquant’s most evocative metaphors, and focusing on it allows us to see how his critique of neoliberal governance fuses sociology, political economy, and moral philosophy.

Let’s unpack it carefully — conceptually, politically, and in relation to New York’s transformation after 1990.

1. The Image and Its Meaning

The centaur, half human and half beast, symbolizes a two-faced state — liberal and market-oriented for the privileged classes, authoritarian and punitive for the marginalized.
Wacquant uses this figure to describe the dual logic of neoliberal governmentality:

“A centaur state: liberal at the top, paternalistic and punitive at the bottom.”
(Punishing the Poor, 2009)

This metaphor captures the moral bifurcation of neoliberalism: it extends freedom, flexibility, and deregulation to capital and the middle classes, while imposing discipline, control, and moral regulation on the poor.

2. Liberal Head, Authoritarian Body

In this imagery:

The upper half — rational, articulate, free — represents the liberal ideal of the autonomous economic actor: the entrepreneur, the investor, the consumer.
- Here, the state retreats, allowing “freedom” and “responsibility” to reign.
- Market mechanisms and self-regulation are valorized.
The lower half — muscular, bestial, coercive — represents the penal arm of the state that manages those excluded from market participation.
- It manifests as surveillance, policing, incarceration, and moralizing welfare regimes (workfare, sanctions, behavioral conditions).

Together, they form a moral hierarchy of citizenship: those who succeed in the market are treated as rational and self-governing; those who fail are treated as irrational and in need of discipline.

3. Historical Genesis of the Centaur State

Wacquant traces this formation to the neoliberal revolution of the 1970s–1990s:

The dismantling of Keynesian welfare and labor protections.
The deindustrialization of urban centers like New York, creating surplus populations excluded from stable work.
The ideological shift from social rights to personal responsibility.
The corresponding expansion of carceral institutions to contain the resulting precarity.

Thus, the centaur state emerges as a response to the contradictions of neoliberal capitalism: it maintains order not through redistribution, but through punitive containment of the socially redundant.

4. New York as the Centaur City

Nowhere did this dual logic become more visible than in New York during the 1990s:

Under mayors Giuliani and later Bloomberg, the city celebrated deregulation, privatization, and luxury development — the liberal, “head” function of the centaur.
Simultaneously, it intensified Broken Windows policing, zero tolerance, and the criminalization of poverty, targeting fare evaders, sex workers, street vendors, and the unhoused — the beastly “body” of control.
Welfare reform (via Clinton’s 1996 Personal Responsibility Act) tied benefits to work requirements and behavioral compliance, turning welfare offices into moral tribunals.

The safe, clean, investable city was thus achieved through a spatial and moral cleansing of undesirable populations — a disciplinary underside that made the neoliberal surface glitter.

5. Moral Bifurcation and the Recasting of Citizenship

The centaur state enforces a double moral economy:

For the upper half: freedom, creativity, entrepreneurialism, “self-care.”
For the lower half: obedience, work discipline, moral hygiene.

Citizenship becomes conditional and stratified.
Welfare is no longer a right but a test of moral worth.
Policing becomes a substitute for social care — the homeless are arrested instead of housed; the addicted are surveilled instead of supported.

This redefines the social contract: the state no longer promises protection from market forces but instead protects the market from the poor.

6. Beyond Punishment: The Centaur’s Function

Importantly, the centaur state is not just punitive — it is ideological.
By punishing the poor, it legitimizes the market order.
It produces moral narratives that justify inequality:

If you are poor, it is because you failed to be self-disciplined.
If you are wealthy, it is because you are rational and free.

This moral inversion transforms economic precarity into a character flaw, turning structural violence into personal responsibility.

7. The Centaur and Governmentality

In Foucauldian terms, Wacquant’s centaur is a hybrid form of governmentality.
It combines:

Neoliberal self-governance (govern through freedom), and
Penal paternalism (govern through coercion).

This is why it’s so effective: the coercive lower half depends on the liberal upper half for legitimation.
Freedom for some is maintained by unfreedom for others.

The centaur state therefore enacts a division of governability itself:
those who can govern themselves are freed from governance; those who cannot are governed absolutely.

8. The Larger Implication

The centaur state represents a moral-political mutation of democracy.
It keeps the appearance of liberal freedom while instituting a carceral social order beneath it.
It solves the crisis of neoliberal legitimacy by displacing social anxiety onto visible bodies — the poor, racialized, and homeless — who must be disciplined for the market’s smooth functioning.

In this sense, the centaur state is not an aberration but the moral anatomy of neoliberalism itself.

9. Summary

The centaur state governs through an upper logic of freedom and a lower logic of discipline. It replaces social rights with penal regulation, moralizes poverty, and stabilizes inequality by transforming suffering into evidence of individual failure. New York’s post-1990 “renaissance” was its most visible manifestation — a city made safe for capital by criminalizing the conditions that capital itself produced.

Loïc Wacquant’s concept of the centaur state is a powerful metaphor for understanding the dual nature of contemporary neoliberal governance. He draws on the image of the mythical centaur—half-human, half-horse—to describe how modern states operate with a split personality: combining benevolence for the privileged and harsh control for the marginalized.

🐴 The Centaur State: Two Faces of Power

Wacquant argues that the centaur state embodies:

A liberal head: For the affluent and middle classes, the state acts with a human face—offering rights, freedoms, and market-driven incentives. This part of the state promotes deregulation, privatization, and individual responsibility.
An authoritarian body: For the poor and marginalized, the state becomes punitive and controlling. It enforces strict surveillance, welfare conditionality, and aggressive policing—especially in urban areas marked by poverty and racial inequality.

🔍 Key Themes in Wacquant’s Analysis

Neoliberalism’s paradox: While neoliberal ideology claims to shrink the state, Wacquant shows that it actually expands in its penal and disciplinary functions. Welfare is rolled back, but policing and incarceration surge.
Urban marginality: The centaur state is most visible in cities, where marginalized populations are subject to intense regulation through welfare sanctions, housing policies, and criminal justice systems.
Social work and control: Professions like social work are co-opted into the state’s disciplinary apparatus—especially in post-socialist contexts like the Czech Republic.
Citizenship and exclusion: The centaur state undermines inclusive citizenship by treating some groups as morally inferior or undeserving. This was starkly illustrated in events like the abandonment of poor African-Americans during Hurricane Katrina

LLM