Estrangement in the "Era Global": The Deepening of Neoliberal Subjectivity and the Decline of "Tunnel Vision"

Abstract

Estrangement from both politics and the state today is taking new forms. The type of toleration of inequality long on display in the United States is emerging in domesticated neoliberal idioms across the global south, where the language of self-appreciation, personal responsibility, and credit-worthiness has evolved and spread. Meanwhile, parallel populations are shedding some of their ideological insulation against the naturalization of economic inequality as neoliberal regimes—both national and international—try to manage dashed expectations of the social future. As popular appeals to equality, anti-elitism, and state power recollect in various global settings, they will require new strategies to succeed.