For an Immanent Critique of a Neoliberal Form of Life

Neoliberal Techniques of Social Suffering, 2023

Neoliberal Techniques of Social Suffering: Political Resistance and Critical Theory from Latin America and Spain is the result of the critical and political commitment of various Latin American and Spanish philosophers who share a critical approach to the global “stealth revolution” in recent decades, where neoliberalism has forced the well-being and reproduction of life to adapt to a system devastating for both humans and non-humans. The authors voice the shared concern of contemporary Spanish and Latin American societies to build new conceptions of the public and the common through mobilizing affects usually disavowed in political theory. If, in Ancient Greece, the idea of strengthening the most vulnerable and weakest was deplored as the art of sophists, this collection edited by Laura Quintana and Nuria Sánchez Madrid explores the other side of our social world to revive grassroots strategies of resistance and emancipation, which are able to bring about new distributions of power, welfare, and discursive legitimation and to extend our goal of creating a radically democratic world.

Journal for Cultural Research, 2018

In this paper, I argue that the appropriate answer to the question of the form contemporary neoliberalism gives our lives rests on Michel Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as a particular art of governing human beings. I claim that Foucault’s definition consists in three components: neoliberalism as a set of technologies structuring the ‘milieu’ of individuals in order to obtain specific effects from their behavior; neoliberalism as a governmental rationality transforming individual freedom into the very instrument through which individuals are directed; and neoliberalism as a set of political strategies that constitute a specific, and eminently governable, form of subjectivity. I conclude by emphasising the importance that Foucault’s work on neoliberalism as well as the ancient ‘ethics of the care of the self’ still holds for us today.

Open Cultural Studies, 2020

The article sets out the thesis that the social-ontological account based on the form of life concept can be used to analytically and normatively reflect alternative economies and their attempt to overcome capitalistic structures. To develop the thesis, I provide conceptual work on the "economic form of life", pointing at its plasticity due to the general substitutability of economic practices. Against this background, I argue that Capitalism makes use of this plasticity to create a fully commodified, radical contingent form of life. Actors of alternative economies can wake up of from this dream world of Capitalism by using the substitutability of economic practices to deconstruct the capitalist form of life. The two most important practices for doing so are the practices of "in-sourcing" and "solidary out-sourcing". They also reveal the normative kernel of conviviality, namely to seek to do justice to the economicity of human life. The paper ends with locating the presented form-of-life-account within the strand of literature on alternative economies.

The present article is an exploration of the relationship between neoliberal capitalism and suffering in a broad sense, which includes everything from economic and physical suffering, psychic suffering in the form of anxiety, self-doubt, uncertainty and stress, to more acute suffering, such as identifiable pathologies. Its point of departure is the patho-analytic principle, that one can gain an understanding of the general psychic condition of humanity by focusing on the characteristic traits of a pathology such as, for example, obsessional neurosis, and examining the possibility that some of these characteristics are encountered in the population at large. Focusing first on evidence of severe economic suffering under the impact of what Klein calls " disaster capitalism " , the argument proceeds to Parker's claim, that the typical subject under capitalism displays the character of obsessional neurosis, then to Salecl's examination of capitalism's " ideology of choice " , Verhaeghe's investigation of the effects of a market-based economy on psychic health, and Federici's claim that there are signs of increasing resistance to capitalist labour. It concludes with some prospective thoughts on Salecl's, and Hardt and Negri's diagnosis of present social conditions under capitalism.

2012

"There are many key questions concerning the current status of the notion of neoliberalism. What is it? Is it an appropriate concept to describe a political and intellectual movement or form of state? What are its prospects as a framework of public policy after the global financial crisis? The article proposes a way of answering these questions by regarding neoliberalism as a definite ‘thought collective’ and a regime of government of and by the state. It exemplifies these by shifts within neoliberalism regarding the question of monopoly, its relationship to classical liberalism and its approach to crisis management. In regard to the latter, it further proposes an emergent rationality of the government of and by the state concerning the fostering of resilience in the anticipation of catastrophe."

PSC 349, Varieties of Capitalism Professor Mark Dallas Farangis Abdurazokzoda Final Paper I, Farangis Abdurazokzoda, affirm that I have carried out all my academic endeavors with full academic honesty. Abstract: In his 1925 paper Physical Consequences of the Anatomic Distinction Between the Sexes, Sigmund Freud asked a simple question "What does a woman want?" With the crises of capitalism and the impotence of communism as a system, the socioeconomic, political and ideological question today is what do we all want? Would we like to live in the realm of Anglo-Saxon neoliberalism or Chinese-Singaporean capitalism with Asian values? And is there another "[economic] model on the rack in this historical season"? This essay aims to highlight the necessity to analyze and diagnose the present, formulating alternatives by reflecting on political rationality taking shape in the U.S. over the past thirty years. To do so, I will discuss the varieties of capitalism: classical liberal capitalism, neoliberalism, capitalism with

The Error Of NeoLiberalism, 2024

The Error of Neoliberalism, critiques the intersection of neoliberal ideology and participatory culture, exposing the mechanisms through which the elite class perpetuates hegemonic control under the guise of collective agency. Drawing on works by Neta Alexander, Safiya Umoja Noble, David Harvey, and the Frankfurt School, this analysis highlights how neoliberalism infiltrates popular and participatory culture, reinforcing systemic inequalities and diminishing true democratic engagement. Through algorithms and commodification, platforms like social media manipulate individuals' desires and self-conceptions, creating a facade of empowerment while reinforcing the "common sense" ideology that prioritizes individualism and consumerism over collective welfare. This paper argues that neoliberalism’s subtle yet pervasive influence transforms participatory spaces into testing grounds for elitist agendas, shaping public discourse to serve capitalist interests. Examples include the commodification of labor-class movements and the distortion of public consciousness via predictive personalization and algorithmic oppression. These processes have led to an erosion of collective intelligence and democratic agency, replacing them with divisive narratives and passive consumption. The study integrates philosophical perspectives, such as Nietzsche's Apollonian and Dionysian duality and Al-Ghazali’s caution against uninformed agency, to underscore the ethical dilemmas of participatory culture in an elitist society. Ultimately, the paper calls for a critical reexamination of neoliberal frameworks and their role in shaping participatory democracy. To reclaim authentic agency, society must interrogate the hegemonic structures embedded in culture and technology, fostering a truly democratic space that resists commodification and prioritizes genuine collective empowerment.

Constellations, 2019

In our grandparents' time, many reasonable people could foresee a radiant socialist future in which private property and capitalism had been abolished, and in which politics itself was somehow overcome. Today, by contrast we have trouble imagining a world that is radically better than our own, or a future that is not essentially democratic and capitalist. (Fukuyama, 2006, p. 46) The neoconservative philosopher Francis Fukuyama made this observation in 1992. On its basis he drew the conclusion that humanity had reached the end of its moral progression, the end of the dialectical history of human recognition , the beginning of which Hegel had posited as the struggle between master and slave. Now-that is to say, with the final victory of liberal capitalist democracies over totalitarian Marxist states symbolized first by the fall of the Berlin wall and then by the break up of the Soviet Union-Fukuyama argued that the final synthesis in that history had been reached, beyond which no further extension of it was thinkable. Isothymia, the democratic culture of universal human rights recognized by the liberal state, was the ultimate moral-historical horizon of humanity beyond which there was no striving. Fukuyama was careful to hedge his claim by pointing out that this was no perfect utopia; that there was no guarantee that all existing states would become liberal democracies, and that movements opposing liberalism still existed. Nonetheless, he insisted, the latter had no real moral basis on which to oppose liberalism because they were founded on a particularistic religious or ethnic appeal whereas the liberal imperative was universal in breadth. There was thus no credible alternative to the tide that lifts all boats of liberal democracy, only the possibility of blind and senseless refusal. The only dark cloud on Fukuyama's horizon was what he called "the last man," the unfettered consumer enabled and encouraged by liberal civilization's very entrepreneurialism. If liberalism created a global economy of entrepreneurs ready to jump at any opportunity to fulfill a need (i.e., to make a buck), then were not their children bound to be hopeless couch potatoes, unable to muster the will or the energy to follow in their parents' footsteps, too sapped, ironically, by the consumerist ethos promoted by their elders? Things, however, have not quite turned out as Fukuyama had either hoped or feared. In fact, as the conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks recently summed up the trajectory of liberalism since the fall of the Berlin wall, the year Fukuyama published the essay on which his bestselling book was based (Fukuyama, 1989), "it's pretty much been downhill ever since" (Siegel, 2017). Fukuyama himself seems to have been ready to agree with this morose recapitu-lation a few years ago when he wrote in an essay, revealingly entitled "The Future of History," that "the current form of globalized capitalism is eroding the middle-class social base on which liberal democracy rests" (Fukuyama, 2012). Unfortunately, this is about as close to an admission of error as Fukuyama makes in the essay, devoting the rest of his

Neoliberal Capitalism as a Form of Life Neoliberal capitalism is a policy model encompassing politics, society, and economics. It favors private enterprise and seeks to transfer the control of economic factors from the government to the private sector. Neoliberal capitalism is a set of economic policies that have become widespread for over five decades (Harvey,2007). Although the word gets rarely heard in the United States, one can see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (Martinez & Garcia,1997). Neoliberals believe that the unregulated market is the best way to stimulate economic growth and grow jobs and the economy, which would eventually benefit everyone. This perspective emphasizes reducing taxes and total freedom of movement for capital, goods, and services while restricting the movement of labor, eliminating workers' rights through de-unionization that had been gained over many years of struggle. However, unregulated markets have not produced growth and prosperity for all, and like Reagan's "supply-side" and "trickle-down" theory of economics-neoliberalism has proven just as disappointing. However, despite its failures, creating vast inequalities and propping up reactionary world regimes, [neoliberal] capitalism remains dominant (McGowan,2016).