Neoliberalism’s Persistence and the Struggle for What Comes After

Abstract

In this article I assess the contribution of works by Nancy Fraser and Wendy Brown on neoliberalism and the rise of right-wing populism. Both theorists report on monstrous and morbid symptoms that have emerged recently: the result of a crisis of hegemony for Fraser, and of contradictions in morality and moral conscience produced by neoliberalism, for Brown. Both also offer a feminist lens in relation to the politics of recognition and identity on the one hand, and wounded angry white maleness on the other. I discuss the differences in their particular contributions to post-Marxist debate and ways forward from the uneasy place in which we find ourselves, in which the moral authority of neoliberalism both wanes and continues to persist. Their work is of particular importance in understanding how subjects are enrolled into neoliberalism and, therefore, how alternative principles, practices and subjectivities, and new coalitions and alliances might be built.