neoliberalism Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

Donald Trump Will Get a Postage Stamp–If He Doesn’t Kill the USPS

June 29, 2020 • by Laura Goldblatt and Richard Handler

In a statement released on April 30, 2020, the United States Postal Service (USPS) outlined its COVID-19 policies. But this government agency, founded at the dawn of the republic, also used the pandemic to argue for its ongoing relevance. “We provide a vital public service that is a part of ...

Donald Trump Will Get a Postage Stamp–If He Doesn’t Kill the USPS

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The Problem with “Neoliberalism”

Neoliberalism is polarizing the 2019 elections. Does it capture Argentina’s predicament?

September 19, 2019 • by Nicolás Saldías

I argue neoliberalism has become a shorthand whose usage does more harm than good. There are three (non-exhaustive) reasons why it is a problematic frame to understand Argentina’s predicament. First, neoliberalism is a concept that over-simplifies multi-causal processes into a narrative frame presented as a coherent whole. It creates an “us ...

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The Demons of Neoliberalism

Adam Kotsko’s Political Theology

September 11, 2019 • by Luke Mergner

This critique was left tantalizingly underdeveloped in The Prince of this World. How could more freedom make us less free? Neoliberalism's Demons answers this question by reading neoliberalism through the lens of political theology. The result is not a new history of neoliberalism but a refocusing on how such an economic system makes ...

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Speculating on Chaos in Financialized Capitalism

Speculations, Spectacles, Spectres

May 30, 2019 • by Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou

Across the channel, during the upheaval caused by the gilets jaunes movement, media and government have condemned protestors’ actions for the continuing chaos they have brought upon France’s city centers. Back in autumn, some weeks before the eruption of the gilet jaunes protests, President Macron used his Armistice Speech to focus on the ...

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Left Melancholy, Neoliberalism, and the Investee Condition

An interview with Michel Feher, author of Rated Agency: Investee Politics in a Speculative Age

May 10, 2019 • by Michel Feher

Public Seminar (PS): What motivated you to write Rated Agency? Michel Feher (MF): Well, three motivations probably. The first one, which is the longer one, comes from reading many years ago Foucault’s lectures on neoliberalism and then thinking through that from the Foucauldian perspective but also realizing soon that these lectures were delivered ...

Left Melancholy, Neoliberalism, and the Investee Condition

Europe & Central Asia

Democracy in Hungary

The Alliance of State Autocracy and Neoliberal Capitalism

April 10, 2019 • by Attila Antal

Looking at the last few years in Hungary – overflowing as it is with hate against refugees, migrants, liberals, George Soros, leftists, homeless people, NGOs, public intellectuals, and the political opposition – we can easily recognize that the political system is as far from a democracy as it was during ...

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Brexit, Dark Money and Big Data

An investigation into the financing of Brexit

February 3, 2019 • by Adam Ramsay

An investigation by openDemocracy into the financing of the Brexit campaign in 2016 has raised far-reaching questions about connections between neoliberal elites, the tech industry and the private intelligence sector. Adam Ramsay, one of the journalists involved, summarizes a story vital to understanding how Britain has ended up where it ...

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Constructing the Neoliberal-Neoconservative Alliance in Israel

The Role of American-funded Think Tanks

November 12, 2018 • by Ben Weinberg

On October 15, 2010 Roger Hertog, Chairman of the New York based Tikvah Fund, gave a remarkably revealing speech. The occasion was his acceptance of the William E. Simon Prize, an award granted annually to prominent philanthropists who invest heavily in promoting free enterprise, and in the speech he laid bare the principles ...

Constructing the Neoliberal-Neoconservative Alliance in Israel

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Neoliberalism with An Inhuman Face

How Bolsonaro won and how the Left failed in Brazil

November 8, 2018 • by Vladimir Pinheiro Safatle

The consolidation of the Brazilian extreme right is a recent fact and deserves to be debated in a more analytical fashion. Even though Brazil had significant parts of its society immersed in the tacit defense of the military dictatorship and in actions marked by the absence of any social solidarity ...

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What is the Crisis a Crisis of?

To characterize our republic’s predicament as one of democracy is an authoritarian fantasy

October 25, 2018 • by Seyla Benhabib

Reading Hannah Arendt’s Crises of the Republic in the Age of Trump: A Symposium Hannah Arendt’s Crises of the Republic is not so much a book as a collection, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1972, of three essays and an interview that first appeared, individually, in the years between 1969 and 1971. Three of ...

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Space Race Remixed

The mythical war between capitalisms

October 9, 2018 • by Sarah Murphy

For centuries we have tried to unravel the mysteries of the universe and images have been vital to that unravelling. At different points in history the moon has been held responsible for insanity, fertility, and even home to alien life. But mostly, these celestial bodies have remained a mere twinkling in ...

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His Body Shop

Issues around the market of self-care

September 11, 2018 • by Paula Landerreche Cardillo

In the past few weeks a new advertisement campaign has invaded the New York City subway. A brand that claims to solve “men’s issues” called hims covers the walls and advertising panels of subway stations and trains. Hims is a brand that sells products to address “men’s issues” such as hair loss, skin imperfections ...