While we will not be discussing it in our meeting, an increasingly common reference point for cultural-conceptual approaches to neoliberalism is the published version of Michel Foucault’s 1978-1979 lectures at the College de France (see below). Wendy Brown draws on and critiques Foucault’s readings in her Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015) in order to trace the contours of what she couches as a “neoliberal rationality”–a way of imaging society, the political subject and the relation between them. Like Michel Feher (see below) and others, her interest is in the political ramifications of cultural changes and, in particular, claims that the transformation and diffusion of concepts shapes what political actions are imagined as possible. We will be discussing chapter three, which uses a reading of Becker (via Foucault) trace neoliberalism’s transformation of the subject, but we have also included chapter five, which conducts a close reading of the US Supreme Court decision in Citizens United.
Nancy Fraser picks up a different strand. In “Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History” (2009) 56 New Left Review 97, Fraser draws on the work of Boltanski and Chiapello (see below) to argue that, at least in the industrialized countries, the reorganization of capitalism after the 1970s was political empowered by leftist critiques of the Fordist, embedded liberal political economy that had been established after World War II. Without endorsing neoliberalism–far from it–Fraser nonetheless suggests that the political success of the neoliberal program had important affinities with certain aspects of first and second wave feminism. Thus, Fraser suggests that analysis of neoliberal ascendance needs to integrate attention to the cultural dimensions of politics.
While Martin Konings (The Emotional Logic of Capitalism: What Progressives Have Missed (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2015), ch 8) shares Fraser’s sense that implicitly anti-capitalist or “progressive” critiques of neoliberalism missed an important part of the picture, but (explicitly critiquing Fraser) suggests that the “moral appeal and emotional resonance” of neoliberalism lay in its “promise of purification through austerity.” Resonating in large part with Brown’s exploration of neoliberal subjectivity, Konings urges greater attention to the role of values, affect and emotion in shaping desires, and thereby legitimating social and political transformations.
Suggested Additional Sources
- Luc Boltanski & Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Gregory Elliot (London: Verso, 2005).
- Pierre Dardot & Christian Laval, The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, translated by Gregory Elliott (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2013).
- Klaus Dörre, Stephan Lessenich & Hartmut Rosa, Sociology – Capitalism – Critique, translated by Jan-Petery Herrmann & Loren Balhorn (London ; Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2015).
- Michel Feher, “Self-Appreciation; or, The Aspirations of Human Capital” (2009) 21:1 Public Culture 21.
- Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1978-79, translated by Graham Burchell, Michel Senellart, ed. (Basingstoke [England]: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
- Nancy Fraser, “A Triple Movement?” (2013) 81 NLR 119.
- Nicholas Gane, “The Emergence of Neoliberalism: Thinking Through and Beyond Michel Foucault’s Lectures on Biopolitics” (2014) 31:4 Theory Culture Society 3.
- Nikolas S Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
- Simon Springer, “Neoliberalism as Discourse: Between Foucauldian Political Economy and Marxian Poststructuralism” (2012) 9:2 Critical Discourse Studies 133.