Monday, June 11, 2007
(7:27 PM) | Amish Lovelock:
The Blind Spot of Neoliberalism Critique
All the recent, usually Foucault/Deleuze-inspired, critiques of contemporary neoliberalism seem to share the same, unspoken blind spot. That it that in all their fervency to describe, locate and explain the new, they understate the sticking power of the old. Perhaps this is why the only political options these critiques seem to come up with are Derridean gift-inspired moral parables and paens to the welfare state or basic income.They say that neoliberalism is a political rationality at complete odds with the principles at the heart of constitutional democracy. That we have gone from disciplinary power to managerial control. That the neoliberal is an amoral insentive providing machine. Sure, but is it not the case, however, that neoliberalism is the naked expression of something that was at the heart of its forebear (liberalism)? Something that goes straight to the heart of constitutional democracy - the freedom of the one and singular body. The freedom of the produced individual subject. A new configuration of power, but a configuration of power nonetheless then.
