the Feminism and Global War group of the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research organized a panel discussion of neoliberalism today, with the aim to think about neo-liberalism from a feminist lens. three theorists of neoliberalism sat at the table, and after the discussion took place i realized that all three were antropologists: Aihwa Ong (UC Berkeley), James Ferguson (Stanford) and Lisa Rofel (UC Santa Cruz). whether due to the shared disciplinary background or not, a common ground emerged throughout their brief talks. the need for “small” stories of neoliberalism, perspectives from below, that debunk the idea that neoliberalism functions according to a singular and unitary logic, paying attention to the different meanings and faces of neoliberalism. all of this in contrast to accounts of Neoliberalism with a capital N (read: Harvey, Hardt & Negri,…).<\/p>\n
a familiar mode of thinking, which has my sympathy – unpacking singular and unitary logics, attending to the stories from below, to the effects on concrete bodies. yet here it didn’t work. for one, at some instances these methodological and epistemological concerns had clearly been transformed into a meta-discourse. in the middle of the discussion Aihwa Ong uttered a surreal sentence linking the self-acclaimed modesty of her approach with accounting for modernity, globalization and neo-liberalism all at once. it also didn’t work because of the defensive set-up in its critique on theories of Neoliberalism, with the capital N. of course Gopal Balakrishnan (from New Left Review, who became the new History of Consciousness professor) and Chris Connery (Cultural Studies) insisted upon a more structural, more political theory, more Marxist account of neoliberalism. as they sat next to each other, and kept on whispering comments throughout the talks, it felt as if there were two blocks: the speakers in the front and the marxist back bench. and i kept on thinking, i want and need stuff from “both” of these approaches and how did they become so divided in this space…<\/p>\n
i shouldn’t forget to mention that James Ferguson did a provocative thing in his discussion of a particular (basic income) project in South Africa that was pro-poor and pro-neoliberal at the same time. (“let’s try to think about that conjuncture, we can’t even think about it. and what if most effective politics are emerging not against neoliberalism, but from within…<\/em>“) and that Aihwa Ong had a silly emotional outburst: you know, it’s really scarry to be here in Santa Cruz. everything needs to be framed in terms of “structure” and “oppositional politics”…. <\/em>(i mean, honestly, the woman is from Berkeley…) and that James Clifford displayed his usual kindness and brilliance in shifting and creating the grounds to connect the pieces and divisions. his intervention began like this: as we all know, when we don’t like a political strategy, we call it reformist, when we do, we call it Gramcist… <\/em><\/p>\n a quick word with (the impressive) Gina Dent afterwards, who just became director of the Institute of Advanced Feminist Research. she didn’t disguise her insatisfaction with the event, in terms of the non-communication (beyond affirming their own positions) between the panel and the marxist back-bench. ah, but surely that was to be expected<\/em>, i said (thinking about this particular set-up). not when i organize<\/em>, she responds with beautiful fury.<\/p>\n but the pleasure of the day lay in the encounter with veronica. we had, eventually, found each other on this entirely de-centered campus in the forest – not an easy thing, this campus doesn’t cease to surprise and disorient, especially if one tries to think in terms of a central square or meeting place. after the panel we went to our home and talked and talked and talked. veronica just came back to california after two years in madrid, where she found the karakola<\/a> and precarias a la deriva<\/a>; maggie had put us into contact. lots of stories of european feminist networks and connections (oh, i get happy<\/a> like a child when talking and plotting about these kinds of feminist families or mafias) and migration and euro-nostalgia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" the Feminism and Global War group of the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research organized a panel discussion of neoliberalism today, with the aim to think about neo-liberalism from a feminist lens. three theorists of neoliberalism sat at the table, and after the discussion took place i realized that all three were antropologists: Aihwa Ong (UC … Continue reading “capitalism part III: what is neo-liberalism?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}