Neo-liberal ideology and the New World: An Interview with Marcel Gauchet

Abstract

Abstract This interview was initiated by Natalie J. Doyle in Paris, a few months only after the publication in 2017 of Le nouveau monde, the last volume of Marcel Gauchet’s four volume history of liberal democracy, published over the course of ten years. It was then continued via email over the course of the following four years. Le nouveau monde offers a wide-ranging historical and theoretical analysis of the contemporary crisis of Western liberal-democratic culture on which the 2020 pandemic has thrown more light because of the neo-authoritarian management of the heath crisis in the Western world. In 2021, it was thus seen necessary to extend the interview to include questions about this reassertion of the political in Western societies but in an illiberal form.