Mediating Neoliberal Capitalism: Affect, Subjectivity and Inequality

Abstract

In this paper we make an argument for why thinking critically about neoliberalism is important for media and communication studies. We advance a case for a critical media analysis that will take seriously the affective and psychic life of neoliberalism as an increasingly central means of governing and producing people’s desires, attachments, and modes of “getting by.” To illustrate our broader theoretical argument, we will discuss the contradictory neoliberal regulation of affective dispositions for women, which prescribe confidence or alternatively, the pleasing, lighthearted readiness to “not take the self too seriously.” We make a case for expanding our theoretical and conceptual vocabulary in order to foreground the relationship between neoliberalism, media and subjectivity in the maintenance of continuing inequalities.