Neither teleologies nor “feeble cries”: revolutionary politics and neoliberalism in time and space

Abstract

ᅟIn critical conversation with George Baca’s recent article “Neoliberal narratives of crisis: the feeble crises of a vanishing “class,”” my article discusses how revolutionary politics and neoliberalism may be explored non-teleologically in time and space, with a focus on the historical interconnections of labor, capital, praxis, and memory across the West, East, and South. The article has two parts. The first one is concerned with the questions of time, history, and memory posed by revolutionary politics. It explores the contours of the modern epistemic and imaginary space of belonging and liberatory praxis constituted by, primarily, the French, Haitian, and Russian revolutions. The second part seeks to situate the history of Eastern European neoliberalism within the global history of capitalism. By focusing on the spatial and temporal unevenness in world capitalism and modernity and problematizing the Eurocentric views on Eastern Europe, it suggests rethinking universality with and in difference.