The article examines the discourses upon poverty, supporting the thesis that poverty has become subject to a system of knowledge and techniques of government that have been reconstructed through neoliberal ideology and seek to produce entrepreneurial subjectivities to subsumes to the market logic. Making reference to foucaultian categories, the author alludes to key moments from the 1970s onwards that have led to the rise of a new order in the discourse about poverty that hinges on the figure of the "poor" - who is represented as uneducated and without initiative. Presenting the results of empirical research carried out in rural communities in Nicaragua, then, the author shows how the dominant discourse about poverty is concretely interiorised and re-formulated from below, by subjects that are willing to take sole responsibility for their own condition.
Keywords: Poverty, discursive practices, governmentality, subjectification, Nicaragua, rural communities