Neoliberal Subject Research Articles

Choosing everything: Bataille’s perishable moments of sainthood

ABSTRACT To be human is to be autonomous, yet this is a trait that most of us lack. We are subject to forces external to our being. We are workers; we are citizens; we are needful creatures. Humanity-proper in these times of neoliberal omnipotence is defined differently. The key terms are familiar: personal betterment, personal responsibility, productivity, pleasantness. A forked tongue slithers in our conscience, tells us that these are the traits of the human condition. Through Bataille, this paper argues the substrate of these oft repeated familiar mantras are other. Neoliberal subjects, propelled by need, understand themselves along the axis of the useful choice. The paper turns to myth to understand the interdependence of need and choice, and how this interdependence posits being as always in desire but never in pleasure. Revisiting Don Giovanni, a character central to Acéphalic thought, and the commentary of Søren Kierkegaard, we think in terms of non-abstraction, of pleasurably floating in change, rather than toiling in desire. For it is by grace in the form of chance, that at the very time of transgression, that we – in and for an instant – become human, become as the sacred in the flesh.

Business continuity, bureaucratic resilience and the limitations of neoliberal survival logics in international organisations

Abstract This article contends that investigating relationalities between business continuity management (BCM), staff behaviours, and bureaucratic resilience advances understandings of the survival of international organisations (IOs). Drawing on in-depth interviews, a global staff survey, and a discourse analysis of United Nations (UN) reports and applying a post-colonial feminist theoretical approach foregrounding care ethics to the study of IOs, the article examines how the UN Secretary-General’s Alternative Working Arrangements directive to close physical offices and open ‘virtual offices’ was implemented in the first 18 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is contended that BCM is necessary for IO survival, since if the IO bureaucracy is unable to be productive and maintain its spheres of influence during a crisis, it risks losing power and authority. Between March 2020 and August 2021, staff facilitated IO survival organically, from the bottom up, in four ways: demonstrating good performance and productivity; being adaptable and resilient; maintaining personal spheres of influence; and building communities of care within the UN. However, the UN’s neoliberal, technocratic approach to business continuity and bureaucratic resilience-building neglected staff care needs. Consequently, IO survival is predicated on staff performing as exploited gendered and racialised ‘neoliberal subjects’, revealing a chronic structural crisis rooted in the UN bureaucracy’s hierarchical composition and unequal employment regime.

Towards an understanding of the political economy of earlychildhood education platforms. Pro Business or Pro Children?

There is a rapidly expanding and proliferating number of commercial early childhood platforms, competing for market share in what has become a crowded marketplace. Early childhood platforms provide a wide range of functions including an all-in-one digital ecosystem offering a learning management system; social media communication between educators, families and children; invoicing and payment; attendance monitoring; data tracking; individual profiling; documentation; pedagogic advice and even policy interpretation. Platforms are a sociocultural and ideological phenomenon that ‘can replace or profoundly disrupt educational systems’ (Cobo and Rivas) and hence their advent demands urgent critical thinking. However, within early years there is comparatively limited research of platforms' impacts upon families, educators and children. The aims of this colloquium are firstly to open a critical space to think about the political economy of commercial education platforms and secondly, to ask questions about platforms' impacts upon the neoliberal subjectivities of educators, families and children.

Voices From the Periphery: Lived Experiences of Women International Students From the Global South Studying at U.K. Universities

Intersectional perspectives on International Student Mobility are burgeoning; however gendered aspects are rarely examined. This paper offers a contribution to this lacuna and provides further understanding of how gender shaped the experiences of six women international students from the Global South. The women participated in semi-structured interviews as part of a wider study analysing ISM in relation to socio-economic status (SES). The women could be seen to be aligned with the ‘post-feminist neoliberal subject’ with evidence of making choices, a desire for financial independence and strong career aspirations. However, life stage and home country cultures intersected with transnational caring for four of the women. This resulted in a re-alignment of ‘success’ upon completion of educational opportunities which reflect gendered inequalities in society. This suggests that there can be a clash of the imagined future identity of a ‘strong independent career woman’ with naturalised aspects of femininity for women international students.

The politics of distraction in English-medium higher education across three global settings: a collaborative autoethnography

ABSTRACT English-medium instruction (EMI) is on the rise around the world due to globalization, internationalization and neoliberal ideologies which equate English with social capital, prestige, and success in the labour market. While many EMI policies aim to equip students with English as a ‘lingua academia’, produce ‘neoliberal subjects’ and compete in university ranking systems, such policies often overlook larger sociolinguistic, sociohistorical, and sociopolitical issues at play. This article shares findings from a collaborative autoethnography (CAE) involving the three authors as participants, who are based in three global contexts: Australia, Bangladesh, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Upon analysis of a series of dialogues amongst the authors, ‘policy distractions’ in EMI higher education were identified which resulted in the sidelining of critical issues related to native-speakerism, translingual discrimination and precarious conditions of students’ translingual practice, (lack of) choice around the medium of instruction, and the postcolonial legacy of unequal Englishes. The paper ends with suggestions for ways in which current EMI policies can be unpacked and disrupted to address larger and more pressing issues connected with complexities and intersections of social and linguistic justice.

“Zhuge Kongming becomes reborn as a clownish partygoer!”: Linguistic carnivalization, critical metapragmatics of danmu, and mediatized neoliberal (inter)subjectivity

The Chinese video-sharing platform of bilibili experiences a ‘Kongming fever’, wherein danmu commenters collectively parodize the historical figure Zhuge Kongming, a pre-existing indexical of Confucianist value beliefs institutionalized by the official authority. Drawing upon Bakhtinian carnivalesque (‘free and familiar contact’ and ‘parodic profanation’), the present study proposes the analytical framework of ‘linguistic carnivalization’ as a critical metapragmatic approach (i.e., subjectivity-oriented). The multimodal analysis of danmu comments reveals how digital users appropriate multiple semiotic resources to construct carnivalesque, including vulgar linguistic varieties from media culture, netspeak genre, poetic patterns of textual repetition, and inversive sign vehicles and rescripting. As a discursive-affective effect of such carnivalization processes, Kongming’s ‘serious’ Confucianist personae and indexed ideological expectations become playfully mediatized, profaned, and transformed into new images of personhood (‘livestreaming microcelebrity’ and ‘hedonic partygoer’) according to mass popular culture. In so doing, the Chinese netizens metapragmatically negotiate existing sociocultural hierarchies and reposition themselves as neoliberal subjects. This paper further suggests that the ‘inside-out’ and ‘down-to-earth’ power of linguistic carnivalization does not simply reside in creating aesthetic humor within a local cybercommunity, but importantly owns critical implications for illuminating variegated forms of neoliberal discourse and (re)production of neoliberal subjectivity under large-scale political economic conditions.

Surveillance and self-care: Performing beauty labor in online video content

Beauty labor, practices that are aimed at attaining, optimizing or shaping physical appearances, has been a part of ‘doing girl’ for decades. But new technologies and neoliberal sensibilities are changing the ways in which beauty is presented to girls and women. This qualitative research examines the discourse of 22 YouTube beauty videos. Using a multimodal critical discourse analysis, this project concerns the mechanisms through which influencers construct themselves as neoliberal subjects and convey this identity to their audiences, subsequently selling the idea of aesthetic entrepreneurialism through the object of the self. It is found that beauty videos contain new and intensified two-way surveilling gazes under which women perform their beauty labor. These gazes influence both the audience and the audienced, as both are subject to possible constant evaluation. YouTubers criticized or praised the looks, behavior or beauty practices of other women, but also adjusted their own behavior and beauty practices based on audience’s critiques. Ideas of beauty labor as a personal responsibility and as a tool for self-optimizing are also found within data. Videos contain notions of neoliberal sensibilities, with YouTubers emphasizing the malleability of their face, the efficiency of their practices, the pricelessness of their labor and the fun of their beauty practices.

“A Satire on What It Is to Be a Human Being”: A Kierkegaardian Critique of Neoliberal Subjectivity

Abstract Neoliberalism has come to be understood not only as an economic system, but as a mode of existence that understands the self as primarily the bearer of human capital. This paper contrasts the neoliberal ideal of selfhood with Kierkegaard’s notion of the self as developed in The Sickness unto Death. Using Kierkegaard’s typology of despair as an analytical framework, I argue that the neoliberal subject displays an impoverished grasp of the various elements that, for Kierkegaard, are constitutive of the self, and shows serious deficiencies in its understanding of what it means to live a meaningful life.

Dilemmas of vulnerability in Indian education NGOs: Neoliberal subjectivity, emotions, and class‐based employment hierarchies in Delhi

AbstractNeoliberal discourse seems to simultaneously demand Delhi's education NGOs to foreground social emotional learning that promotes emotional vulnerability and requires educational leaders to passionately present as “resilient” entrepreneurs who must not let emotions influence their capacity to lead. This article ethnographically analyzes the relational dynamics in these NGOs and argues that the complexity of navigating this subjective neoliberal dilemma reproduces class‐based employment hierarchy in NGO leadership, hindering NGO aims to further social justice.

Resisting and disrupting neoliberal subjectivity in self-directed education: what can we learn from black homeschoolers

PurposeFrom the in-group status as a former homeschool parent, the goal is to problematize the entanglement of neoliberalism within self-directed education (SDE) pedagogies. Further and importantly, this study aims to bring attention to and examine the neoliberal resistant practices found in Black homeschooling.Design/methodology/approachA narrative literature review, content analysis and autoethnographic reflection to critically examine the neoliberal subjectivity of SDE and identify neoliberal-resistant SDE practices of Black homeschooling families.FindingsThis paper identifies SDE’s vulnerability to neoliberal subjectivity despite the neoliberal oppositional ethos of many of its practices and its antiestablishment historical context and rhetoric. It analyzes conceptions of self, autonomy and freedom (the ideas that underwrite self-direction) that can inform a critical self-directed learning (SDL) approach. It explores contemporary Black homeschooling and SDE practices for evidence of these conceptions, arguing that this demographic, at the margin of the discursive homeschooling community, instantiates an authentic resistance and disruption to neoliberal subjectivity in SDE.Originality/valueVery little research has been done on neoliberal subjectivity in the discursive SDE community. The vulnerability of SDE to neoliberalization is important to SDL homeschoolers, unschoolers and other SDE facilitators who want to practice alternative-to-mainstream values or social justice-oriented pedagogy. Without awareness of this vulnerability, neoliberal hegemony can be reproduced by SDE practices.

Neoliberal feeling rules and political subjectivities in post-Soviet Latvia: narratives of emigrants and those who remain

This study integrates the literature on neoliberal subjectivities with the sociology of emotions, and particularly the notion of feeling rules, to understand the political subjectivity expressions in Latvia where the post-Soviet neoliberal development brought high income and wealth inequality. We specifically ask what the relationship between collective emotions and neoliberal political subjectivity in post-Soviet space is. Based on our empirical data, we construct three ideal types of political subjectivities wherein each holds a different narrative about the neoliberal state. We show the first two dominated among our respondents in Latvia while the third was prevalent among emigrant Latvians. We find that respondents’ narratives dominant at home were framed by neoliberal feeling rules which fostered optimistic thinking (narrative of resilience) and feelings of individual responsibility (narrative of legitimating) silencing the emotion of anger necessary to form a critical democratic dialogue with the state. Meanwhile, emigrant Latvians voiced a more socially and politically aware critique towards the Latvian state, austerity politics and social injustice (narrative of anger). We provide implications for this theory of post-Soviet political subjectivities at the end.

In the business of gendered violence: the private shelter discourse in Sweden

For-profit companies have begun competing with women’s shelters for ‘clients’ trying to escape violence. Using discourse theory, this study examines how 20 private shelters describe their business. The analysis shows that private shelters describe themselves as: (1) having a broad expertise and target group: (2) being able to tend to the individual needs of any client; and (3) being highly available and flexible. We understand this as an expression of a neoliberal market discourse and as a way to differentiate themselves from women’s shelters. This may put pressure on women’s shelters to provide similar ‘inclusion’, availability and flexibility. Furthermore: (4) private shelters contribute to shaping a desirable neoliberal subject, that is, a self-reliant woman; and (5), by articulating needs as individual and inherently mundane, they lean more towards ‘providing accommodation’ than addressing the particularities of (gendered) violence.

My Data, My Choice? Privacy, Commodity Activism, and Big Tech’s Corporatization of Care in the Post-Roe Era

After the Dobbs decision ended federal abortion protection in the United States, experts raised concerns about digital data collected from people seeking abortions. U.S. technology corporations—Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon—were conspicuously silent. Instead, GAMMA (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon) released statements and/or policies surrounding commitments to data privacy seemingly incongruous with surveillance-based business models. We examine GAMMA’s policies, statements, and associated news coverage post-Roe through commodity activism and politics of care. We reveal recurring discourses that cast technical privacy features as sufficiently protective alongside scrupulous data practices by users and that constrain the purview of company responsibility to full-time employees. A focus on responsible data management sidesteps critiques of data collection, framing GAMMA’s policy changes as corporate care but furthering commodification of individual privacy, reproducing the neoliberal subject, and upholding surveillance capitalism.

Sustainability, Agency Empowerment, Neoliberalism in Global Citizenship Education

This paper explores the impact of evolving sustainability discourse and its integration into Global Citizenship Education (GCE) since 2015 on the formation of neoliberal subjectivity. While the post-2015 sustainability discourse and GCE model aim to systematize GCE approaches and empower individuals as change-makers, they consequently reinforce the neoliberal principles of self-governance and economic rationalization. Utilizing Michel Foucault’s theories on neoliberalism and neoliberal subject formation, this study examines how the post-2015 GCE model’s emphasis on standardization, measurement, and individual agency empowerment fosters self-convincing and self-regulating global citizen subjects to maintain that this process of neoliberal subjectivization cultivates an individuated, self-centered subjectivity that may undermine collective efforts to address global challenges.

“What it is exactly that circulates”: Affective value, re/production, and rhetorical exchange

Revising Marxist theories of circulation with affect theory, this article establishes a new model of rhetorical analysis that positions rhetorical exchange as a circulatory infrastructure of late capitalism. By measuring the value produced by rhetors and audiences in rhetorical exchange, we can see how the daily rhetorical activity of neoliberal subjects captures our behavior, positioning us a raw material for late capitalists. This new theory of rhetorical circulation is tested and revised by a qualitative study on the mundane communication of neoliberal subjects, in this case, the group chat of one fantasy football league. Fantasy football communication creates an ambient backdrop for its users, leading to quotidian rhetorical exchanges in clearly defined social networks. The study shows the contours of rhetorical exchange in one league's GroupMe chat. I found that, in exchange, subjects transform their investments into social and cultural capital (Bourdieu's capital forms). Ultimately, subjects can produce what I call affective capital, a uniquely neoliberal capital form. I find that the immense value of affective capital produced by league members in rhetorical exchange points to the reasons why neoliberal subjects repeatedly return to platforms that harvest our data.

Smooth operator: sleuthing Homo oeconomicus on social media platforms through a close reading of design

ABSTRACT This article argues for the excavation of a key design logic around which the user interfaces (UIs) of mainstream social media platforms are built but that has not yet received much critical attention: the Western neoliberal subject as market actor, or homo oeconomicus, ‘economic man.’ This article identifies and connects key features in UI design of social media platforms to histories of European thought that emerge from the colonial and industrial eras around this universal figure of ‘Man.’ It takes initial inspiration from existing research with queer and trans users of the platform Tumblr as a counterexample, or illiberal platform. Borrowing across disciplines, it offers a technique of ‘close reading’ of UI design decisions and outlines a specific rubric for locating the biases of homo oeconomicus baked in to these decisions, which alleviate as much friction as possible in the path from user data to monetization. It closes with attention to other kinds of design logics and platforms that do not take this figure as their building block, such as a digital platform for queer sociality in the Middle East, in which strategic opacity and collective vetting work as communal protectives instead of being designed around individual agency and market logics.

#BecomingYou: Discourses of authenticity, work, and success in South African consumer culture

Authenticity is now being used to describe things as diverse as politicians, wallets and holiday packages, and claims to authenticity have become increasingly marketable. Media sources from magazines to social media blogs are all inundated with a persisting, recurring message: that tapping into the “real you” will be the liberating force allowing you to live a happy and successful life. This paper draws on a social constructionist theoretical framework and discourse analytic method to critically analyse three interconnected discourses of personal authenticity (as success, change and work) explored in 10 marketing campaigns prominent in South African media. The constructions found in these media are important not just as reflections of current subject positions available in a particular context, but also in the (re)construction of these particular identities and the (re)production of particular social systems. More specifically, in this case, by closely tying authenticity to notions of success, work and change, these discourses produce “good neoliberal subjects”- ambitious, self-regulated, proactive and productive citizens committed to personal progress and contributing to a “functioning” society. In other words, through these discourses, individuals’ personal aspirations (e.g. self-improvement or happiness) become inextricably linked with capitalist modes of being (work and consumption).

To sit quietly by oneself: on neoliberal capitalism’s ‘unprecedented inner loneliness’

Building upon Max Weber’s insightful critique of the capitalist spirit as causing ‘unprecedented inner loneliness’, this article traces the trajectory of a fraught subjectivity over the course of a socioeconomic order from the Protestant Reformation to the present. Beginning with the premise that this socioeconomic order has a long history of both inviting and foreclosing upon the capacity to have an inner life, the general argument is pursued that grappling with one’s separateness, as well as the separateness of the object, gives rise to an inevitable sense of loneliness. This psychoanalytically informed sense of loneliness is juxtaposed with the gnawing loneliness that seems to haunt neoliberal subjectivity, revealing how the former might provide an imperfect but still viable antidote to our increasing inability to sit quietly by ourselves. Particular focus is given to re-evaluating Winnicott’s notion of the capacity to be alone in light of cultivating a separate self. The article concludes with some tentative thoughts on what suffering a separate self might entail, including suffering one’s inevitable loneliness.

Encoding material female bodies through cosmetic surgeries: a study of cultural economy and the biometric dynamics of Indian Hindi film stars

The emergence of new body technologies has led to the deconstruction of a cosmetically enhanced celebrity body into a bioinformational data-self, which becomes a surveilled subject quantified through biometric proximity....

Neoliberalism, institutional change and the new culture of the university professoriate: the Spanish case

ABSTRACT Neoliberalism has pervaded almost everywhere in the world, bringing about major changes in institutional frameworks and social relations. Science and university research have not escaped the effects of the neoliberal conception of university knowledge as a commodity and of Higher Education as a factor of economic growth. This research offers a provisional assessment of the effects of the profound institutional change produced in the Spanish university sphere instigated European and national directives. As will be seen, the implementation of the operational criteria of evaluation is shaping a new culture of university teaching staff. This paper ties together a Institutionnal Political Economy explanation of the transformation of Spanish academia with research evidence of the outcomes of a neoliberal regime, honing in or activities resembling or constituting malpractice, and complicity of staff in their governance, alongside the more commonly discussed issues of workplace stress, overwork, and mental health issues. This research analyses the discursive devices and strategies used for the construction of the new neoliberal subjectivity, by means of an exhaustive review of the literature and empirical studies carried out in Spain. Next, the institutional effects of the disproportionate use of metrics are presented. Thirdly, the socialisation processes of Spanish academics and their adaptation to evaluation methods are described. The text ends with a brief conclusion and a series of proposals aimed at configuring another way of generating knowledge in a model designed more for development than for economic growth.