Chapter 5, "Foucault’s Dilemma," critically examines the limitations of Michel Foucault's biopolitics in understanding contemporary neoliberal society.

While Foucault recognized a shift in power dynamics, he failed to fully transition from biopolitics to psychopolitics in his analyses of neoliberal forms of government, remaining anchored to concepts like population and the body.

The chapter argues that biopolitics, which focuses on the administration and discipline of the physical body and populations for industrial production, is ill-suited to the neoliberal regime.

Neoliberalism, as a mutated form of capitalism, has instead discovered the psyche as a primary productive force, leading to a "psychic turn" and the emergence of psychopolitics.

This new form of power emphasizes mental optimization over physical discipline, and exploits immaterial forms of production like information.

Furthermore, the chapter asserts that Foucault overlooked how the neoliberal regime co-opts "technologies of the self," such as perpetual self-optimization, transforming them into highly efficient modes of domination and voluntary self-exploitation.