"Caring" Capitalism and the Duplicity of Critique
Wanda VrastiTheory & Event, Volume 14, Issue 4, 2011, (Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2011.0041
Foradditionalinformationaboutthisarticle
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/459121
(12 Jul 2018 11:46 GMT)
Abstract: How do individuals become emotionally invested in neoliberal ideology? Why do people passionately attach themselves to formations that are ultimately domineering and destructive? This paper brings together Foucauldian governmentality critique with autonomist Marxist writings on post"Fordist capitalism to contribute to the on"going conversation on the social reproduction of neoliberal capital. While, both bodies of theory grant subjectivity a constitutive role, neither takes seriously enough the power of neoliberal ideology to put forth affective structures and the ability of individuals to derive pleasure from them. While Foucauldian approaches exaggerate the role of economic rationality in capitalism thus inviting an easy retreat into individualist and consumerist resistance tactics, autonomist thinkers are overly confident that the communicative and cooperative dispositions demanded from the post" Fordist workforce already contain the potential to “become common.” Seeing how neither of these promises has yet materialized, I propose a more humble and subtle critical practice that borrows from Foucault’s “critical ontology of ourselves.”
Keywords: Neoliberalism; autonomist Marxism; affect; capitalism
The argument that, since capitalism incorporated “some of the values in whose name it was criticized,” notably alienation, rationalism, hyperindividualism, and masculinism, there is no longer an “outside” from which to launch a credible anti"systemic critique, is by now a familiar lamentation of the Left.1 Confronted with a mode of capitalism that is more inclusive and rewarding than anything predicted by the traditional Marxist narrative of struggle and contradictions, the phrase “the end of capitalism (as we knew it)” only makes sense in so far as it announces the coming of a renewed (more tolerable, pleasurable, and perhaps equitable) version of accumulation. The Left is well aware that to take issue with a system that seems to allow an unprecedented number of people to enjoy a prosperous and fulfilling existence, promising to improve even the lives of those marginalized on account of their gender, race, and sexuality is, at best, a ridiculous gesture and, at worst, a misanthropic impulse, the necessity of which can only be maintained through increasingly dangerous acrobatics. This paper is an acrobatic exercise of this sort.
Some of the paradoxical questions it seeks to find an answer to include: How do individuals become emotionally invested in social formations that betray an obvious propensity towards socio"economic and ecological crises? Why has it become enjoyable, a source of self"realization even, to contribute to the reproduction and innovation of neoliberal capital? What kind of moral legitimating structures does capitalism rely on to make critique look ridiculous or exasperating? These are not necessarily novel preoccupations. Both Foucauldian approaches to neoliberal governmentality and critical Marxist discussions of post"Fordism acknowledge that the only way for capitalism to perpetuate its rule is to acquire the social goal it was accused of never having. Yet neither approach takes seriously enough the power of neoliberal ideology to put forth affective structures and the ability of individuals to derive pleasure from them. On the one hand, Foucauldian scholarship is too caught up in the problem of economic rationality to notice that a lot of the criticisms it advances against the callous, dispassionate, and hyperindividualistic ethos of neoliberalism have already been resolved by the advent of so"called “caring capitalism.” On the other hand, autonomist writers are too enthralled by the subversive potentials of communicative and cooperative forms of production to acknowledge that the affective injunctions demanded by post"Fordist capitalism (e.g., private injunctions to self"care, the discourse of therapy, and electronic self"monitoring, but also collective injunctions to humility, compassion, tolerance, diversity, creativity, communication, and cooperation) are better suited at attaching individuals to the ethos of “new entrepreneurship” than at producing resistant solidarities. While I remain sympathetic to both interventions, I put aside for a moment the recurrent leftist call for collective action to propose a politics anchored in Foucault’s “critical ontology of ourselves.” Before we can learn how to live" in"common, we first need to take a moment to examine our deepest attachments and remember how easily all the things we do to improve ourselves and the world around us are absorbed back into moral regulations and/or consumerist modalities.
The World as a “Kind of Permanent Economic Tribunal”
Broadly speaking, neoliberalism is a philosophy “that assumes the market as the test and means of intelligibility, as the truth and the measure of society.”2 This is not to say that neoliberalism is Adam Smith revisited (classical
liberalism with a vengeance), or Marx reloaded (a generalized market society), or even Solzhenitsyn on a global scale (the exacerbation of state power).3 It is something entirely new: a set of power relations that extends the logic of market relations across the entire social field. This means that, rather than mediating the tensions of the market, neoliberal government intervenes in to create the necessary conditions for competitive markets and entrepreneurial conduct. The explicit task of governmental programs and strategies is to align social and ethical life with economic criteria and expectations.4
If immediately after World War II neoliberals were still a minority within American policy circles, by the mid" 1970s, when Friedrich van Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics and Milton Friedman established the Chicago School of Economics against the backdrop of the OPEC oil crisis and the demise of the Bretton Woods system, they had gained considerable ground from their Keynesian rivals through the concerted efforts of think tanks, research institutes, business schools, and media outlets.5 Once Margret Thatcher became British Prime Minister in 1979 and Ronald Reagan was elected into the White House in 1980 there was little else to stand in the way of neoliberal triumph.6 In the United States this was not necessarily an unprecedented victory so much as a confirmation of the country’s deep liberal roots, that stretch back to the War of Independence, the debate around protectionism, the question of slavery, the status and function of the judiciary, and, more recently, the critique of federal interventionism during the time of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and finally Obama.7 What was unprecedented, however, was that by the end of 20th century, thanks to the Washington Consensus model of economic globalization, neoliberal policies (e.g., fiscal discipline, government spending cutbacks, labor deregulation, financial speculation, open markets and privatization) had become a global reality no one dared to question.8
For many people this story of neoliberalism brings to mind a capitalist dystopia: a world governed by market principles, where every human relation and social ideal is subordinated to a consumerist logic. Popular culture is littered with scenarios such as these: books like Bret Easton Ellis’ , Chuck Palahniuk’s , Frédéric Beigbeder’s , Michel Houellebecq’s , Victor Pelevin’s , Gary Shteyngart’s , Don DeLillo’s , and films like ! ", # $ and its recent sequence ! % & $ are a constant reminder of how desolate and dehumanized life has become in a world governed by capitalist greed and corruption. Popular culture is not alone in this lamentation for a more humane past. Post"war cultural and political theorists also bemoan the rise of a political subject so sedated by the material and technological comforts of middle"class existence that it lacks any historical consciousness or political force. The critique of the man in the grey flannel suit has been at the heart of militant texts like Adorno’s , Marcuse’s ' ( ! , William Whyte’s ' ) ! , C. Wright Mill’s # , Sartre’s portrait of the “serialized man,” and Cornelius Castoriadis’ examination of bureaucratic productivism.9 The alienating and repressive effects of the military"industrial complex have animated leftist struggles from decolonization wars and civil rights movements to student protests and mass worker “revolt against work.” Recently, in response to the most recent financial crisis, conservative voices also began to take issue with the conformism and corruption of high capitalism which is seen to pose a threat to the American tradition of free enterprise, individual autonomy, and craftsmanship. The Tea Party Movement, in particular, articulated the disillusionment many Americans felt when Washington decided to save Wall Street at the expense of the much more humble, earnest, and authentic version of free market economy found on Main Street.10 Both ends of the political spectrum, then, are growing increasingly worried that we might have sold out our dreams for dignity and self" mastery to a consumerist and callous arrangement.
A persuasive explanation for how we have gotten to this point comes from Foucault’s epigones. It is not that we have been “duped” or “whipped” into obedience by neoliberal capitalism, governmentality scholars argue, but that we have learned to assume the model of market rationality spontaneously and enthusiastically.11 Neoliberalism is not an already accomplished social ontology. Rather, it is “a constructivist project”12 that seeks to universalize market rationality across the entire social field by promoting social and moral orders that are conducive to the ethos of competition and entrepreneurial conduct. But how is liberalism to intervene in society to make sure that it possesses the cultural norms and social orderings liberalism needs without extending the tentacles of government to illiberal extents? The solution to this conundrum is the model of action – an ideal type of conduct that endows liberalism with a principle in the name of which government should be organized and, ultimately, limited.13 Without violating the “formally autonomous” character of individuality14, the model teaches individuals to and assess the costs and benefits of their choices, assume responsibility for their actions, and apply economic criteria to every aspect of their life, from their
profession to their private property, physical appearance, personal relations, and private lives.15 This “artificially created form of behavior”16 is only partly the effect of structural attacks on the welfare state and the dissolution of older social ties, like class, religion, and communal associations. To a great extent it is the result of a variety of minute biopolitical interventions and manipulations of the social environment, such as the moralization of economic responsibility17; the proliferation of empowerment techniques (e.g., “self"esteem” and “self"career”) that promote individual responsibility, risk"calculation, and managerial expertise18; and the valorization of affective and aesthetic competencies to compensate for the cutback in social services and safety provisions.19
The beauty of the Foucauldian story of neoliberalism is that it grants subjectivity a constitutive role in historical processes even if, ultimately, too little is asked about what makes neoliberalism succeed or fail at the level of individual subjectivity and too often the role of subjectivity is simply to reproduce the outcome of a story we know all too well.20 Placing the subjective condition at the centre of social reproduction is an important corrective to classic liberal and historical Marxist analyses, both of which treat capitalism as a naturalistic machine with an inherent logic and intrinsic contradictions. Where I fear that a theory that “tend[s] to deduce the actual state of subjectivity under neoliberalism from the homo oeconomicus” model21 might run into trouble is when it equates neoliberalism with a world at the mercy of a “permanent economic tribunal.”22 I am not convinced that economic schemata (i.e., cost"benefit calculations, efficiency assessments, key performance indicators, and competition) exhaust the possibilities for lending our lives an entrepreneurial shape. This would imply that neoliberalism produces nothing but a series of Patrick Bateman"like figures obsessed with assessing their bank accounts, credentials, looks and… body count to the exclusion of all social, moral, and affective considerations. Or that we live in a society numbed by consumer goods and services. Or that market rationality is limited to instrumental action and bureaucratic organization styles. Such a world would quickly become intolerable. There is much more room for emotions, enjoyment, community values and even neurosis in entrepreneurial conduct than Foucauldian scholars imagine.23 Instead of taking seriously the more recent pleasurable and gratifying transformations of neoliberal capital, which are after all what compel individuals to passionately and spontaneously reproduce its ethos, Foucauldian approaches are content to evoke a series of romantic discontents that capitalism has long resolved or, rather, displaced.24 This false problem invites a false solution: The idea that capitalism is a purely economistic and repressive reality opens the door to a variety of individualist and consumerist resistance tactics (e.g., ethical consumption, green living, charity, volunteering) which pose “capitalism with a human face” as the limit of our radical horizon.25
From “Caring” Capitalism …
The flexible economy we are confronted with today is in many ways a lot more rewarding, inclusive, and exciting than the rationalist story of neoliberal government would allow. On the one hand, this is the effect of the artistic critique and democratic excess of the 1960s and 70s having been absorbed into the spirit of capitalism.26 On the other hand, flexible accumulation is a systemic answer to the depletion of mass markets, the fiscal burdens of the welfare state, and the changing nature of global competition which caused the Fordist productivity crisis in the early 1970s.27 Together, late 20th century territorial and technological reconfigurations of capital gave birth to a “new economy” where organization styles are more horizontal and inclusive, labor is rewarding and immaterial, production happens just"in"time, and consumption is ready"to"assemble. This shift in production is accompanied by a shift at the level of political subjectivity: today’s “new entrepreneur” has to complement economic rationality with emotive dispositions and social competencies that were once ornamental, adverse even to capitalism. The moralizing stories of Enron, Lehman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs teach us that economic conduct based solely on rational choice and cost"benefit calculations to the exclusion of all other social and moral considerations can actually be “bad for business.”28 Instead flexible accumulation requires new political animals, such as the social entrepreneur, the creative worker, the frugal consumer, and the volunteer tourist – actors who use corporate social responsibility, continuing education, ethical consumption or charitable contributions to lend capitalism a “human face.”
Several writers have already noted the ethico"political confusion this “big morph” between bourgeois and bohemian values poduce (Florida 2002). In his book * % + , + - . , David Brooks describes the “new upper class” roaming around the “rejuvenated” corners of urban America. Returning after a five"year absence Brooks finds that the professional conduct, leisurely habits, and moral codes of the 1990s have significantly changed: they blur “the values of bourgeois, mainstream culture and the values of the 1960s counterculture”30 into what he calls a “bourgeois"bohemian” synthesis. While Brooks seems skeptical of this metamorphosis and particularly of what it does to our previous categories of thought and meaning (“It is now
impossible to tell an espresso"sipping artist from a cappuccino"gulping banker”31), especially because he takes it as an indication of the conceit of “Liberal Elites,” the book amounts to little more than a detailed portrait of elite tastes and consumption habits. Keeping with the same business"friendly tone, Richard Florida, author of several nightstand bibles for urban planners, public policy makers, and start"up entrepreneurs, has no qualms about extolling the virtues of this new social subject. Just like Foucault and autonomist Marxists before him, but with a lot more glee, Florida’s bestselling book & + / # 0 1 0 2& 1 32 argues that we have entered a new organizational phase, where the main driving forces of production are no longer technological (land, resources, manpower) but human. Creativity is now the principal source of economic value. While Florida goes to great length to limn the “elaborate market profile of an upscale consumer”33 as distinct both from the austere conformism of Whyte’s “organization man” and the conspicuous consumerism of Veblen’s “leisure class,” we learn almost nothing about what counts as creativity and why it has become so central for capitalism. Instead, we are Left with a self"help manual for the new"economy era.34
At the opposite end of the spectrum we find Zizek’s critique of the new elites who believe “that we can have the global capitalist cake, i.e., thrive as profitable entrepreneurs, and eat it, too, i.e., endorse the anti"capitalist causes of social responsibility and ecological concerns.”35 The most obvious example of what Zizek calls “liberal communists” are celebrity figures like George Soros and Bill Gates, who have made their fortunes through a stroke of entrepreneurial genius and now dedicate their time to sharing their wealth in ways that can appease the capitalist crises they themselves created and benefited from.36 But “liberal communists” are also the people from “Porto Davos” who hope to earn money as an unintentional, almost accidental, side"effect of doing good works, the environmental pragmatists who understand that going green is the way to gold, and the creative workers who derive so much enjoyment from their work that they forget to ask for remuneration. They are the frugal consumers, the charitable souls, and the social entrepreneurs who prefer to dress up business as usual in a new moral cloth rather than question the conditions that make a capitalist morality, this oxymoron, necessary in the first place.
Although not a lot of Foucauldian scholarship has dwelt on these contradictions, Foucault knew them all too well. Neoliberalism was never supposed to create a society centered on standardization, mass consumption, and spectacle, but one oriented “towards the multiciplicity and differentiation of enterprises.”37 For neoliberal ideology to become “a general style of thought, analysis, and imagination”38, market exchanges cannot corrupt the spiritual, emotional, and communal foundations of modern society (as the romantic narrative goes), but must produce a social body that is invigorated by the dynamics of enterprise.39 Even the early 20th century Ordoliberals understood that the “cold” mechanisms of competition had to be embedded in a set of “warm” moral and cultural values that could compensate for the otherwise mechanistic and alienating consequences of economic rationality. For the enterprise form to become a “universally generalized social model” it needed a “society for the market and a society against the market,” a society that could extend the economic grid across the entire social field and a society that could make up for the effects of the market through rewarding and meaningful experiences.40 It was the task of what Ordoliberals called - (societal politics) or what Foucault later termed biopolitics to “reproduce and re"activate moral and cultural values” that would make economic enterprise coterminous with the energies of social life.41
Perhaps the literature on governmentality missed many of Foucault’s original nuances because the French thinker never managed to fully explore the subject of biopolitics. At the end of lectures Foucault apologizes for having dedicated so much time to “the condition of intelligibility of biopolitics” (i.e., liberalism) that he failed to address “the politics of life” per se, which was originally intended to be at the heart of his lectures and which would have certainly shed more light on the benevolent or pastoral intent of neoliberal rule.42 Although he discusses the strategies and programs designed to integrate biological life (i.e., health, productivity, life expectancy, birth rate, race, and so on) into the sphere of politics elsewhere43, Foucault has relatively little to say about how individual beings are made [and make themselves into] subjects” of liberalism.44 Not even the model can make up for this lacuna since it is only an ideal form, a grid of intelligibility between the individual and government that does not amount to a full account of subjectivization.45 This is why most scholars interested in Foucault’s ambiguous concept of biopolitics have turned either to Agamben’s notion of 46 or to Hardt and Negri’s writings on biopolitical production.47
… to “Benevolent” Biopolitics
Coming from the discipline of International Politics, for a long time, my understanding of biopolitics has been monopolized by Agamben’s reading of the term, as the moment when sovereign power abuses liberal democratic
politics to reduce life to a worthless category. According to Agamben, biopower generalizes the “state of exception” to the point where denigrating life becomes the original activity of modern institutions48 and, indeed, a political inevitability inscribed in the structure of liberal democratic politics.49 This reading of biopolitics has featured prominently in post"9/11 international political theory, in particular in relation to the War on Terror, exceptional incarceration and interrogation practices, and the rise of digital and biometric surveillance and securitization strategies.50 Contrary to this totalizing vision, which refuses to distinguish between governmental programs that “protect life and [those that] authorize a holocaust,”51 Hardt and Negri’s view of biopolitics is more concerned with reproducing life than disallowing it, even if this implies subsuming all social life to the logic of production. In doing so, they remain faithful – at least more faithful than Agamben – to Foucault’s distinction between sovereign and pastoral power.52 Let’s dwell on this distinction for a moment.
Pastoral power, Foucault explains, introduces an entirely different code of ethics derived from Judeo"Christian principles of love and care for the living.53 Its intent is both totalizing and individualizing: to optimize the life of the entire flock through sacrifice and salvation as well as care for each individual in particular through confession, self" monitoring, and exploration of the soul. After being voided of ecclesiastical connotations in the 18th century, pastoral power spread beyond church institutions to become the precursor of modern biopolitics.54 In its secularized variant, instead of saving people or preparing them for the afterlife, the scope of pastoral power becomes to optimize the livelihood of the population by maximizing their health, security, and standard of living. Shepherding responsibilities extend from clerics to various state institutions, such as police, welfare organization, schools, prisons, charities, and so on. At the same time, the pressure on individuals to know and monitor themselves through statistical, therapeutic, and biotechnological means increases exponentially to match the growing interest in their well"being and the structural need for responsible, self"reliant, and entrepreneurial subjects.55 In showing that “the paradigmatic subject of biopolitics is not, Agamben, the of the concentration camp but rather the Swedish middle"class social democrat, the object of universal care”56 this more benign view of biopower complicates our received understanding of the term.
Liberal theory, despite being traditionally associated with the simultaneous rise of modern state power and free market ideology, has never been oblivious to the seductive pull of pastoral power. From its very beginning, liberalism has used Judeo"Christian principles to legitimate economic drives, which until the 18th century were discredited as vulgar passions prone to avarice and greed. In / , Albert Hirschman explains that the only way for classic liberalism to assume dominance in the 18th century was to demonstrate that the pursuit of economic interests could help govern human affairs, both individual and collective, in a more rational way. 57 Enlightened minds like Locke, Smith, and Hume were convinced that, if practiced in moderation, money" acquisitive drives could have various restorative effects: improve collective welfare, promote industriousness, calculation, and benevolence, and bring about a more predictable and constant human environment by taming other, far more destructive, passions like aggression and promiscuity. In effect, the liberal pastoral harbors a distinct normative dimension which contradicts the famous Marxist idea that capitalism is the only social formation completely devoid of a moral logic of its own and, therefore, entirely dependent upon external persuasion mechanisms and normative principles.58 To insist on the normative ambition of free market ideology is to add another dimension to liberalism, hitherto ignored or disparaged by critical theory. It is not, however, to accept, as liberalism does, that the pursuit of individual economic rationality will naturally translate in increased collective wellbeing. What ultimately sustains the benevolent intent of the liberal pastoral is a deep"seated historical amnesia that needs to hide from public view the history of capitalist enclosures, displacements, and antagonisms to maintain the fiction of a free market economy that is good for all.59 Examples of this logic are abundant: Ordoliberal 3 and Chicago School “human capital” theory, post"war therapeutic models of industrial relations, the no" collar work ethos of communicative capitalism, the financialization of everyday life over the past few decades, and the affective injunctions of the Third Way – we are surrounded by discourses that promise to realize the potential of life on the condition that we abide by the principles of competition and accumulation.60
To sum up, the benevolent intent of biopolitics is twofold. On the one hand, it provides individuals with the necessary skills and resources to govern themselves in light of certain economically viable principles and axioms. On the other hand, it tries to bridge the distance between economic value and social welfare, between individual economic responsibility and a broader (almost moral) social responsibility in the hopes of aligning neoliberal market principles with certain normative principles of social cohesion, order, and dignity. This second point does not cancel the fact that neoliberalism still functions as a colonization technology that criminalizes and/or converts all “illiberal” forms of life (i.e., racialized and gendered corporealities, communal forms of living, radical
political acts) that exist outside the limits of capital.61 It does however make apparent that the success of neoliberal ideology is not secured individual autonomy or " the social fabric that holds us together. Rather, it functions thanks to the enthusiastic cooperation of white, middle"class individuals, who stand to gain the most from this system of accumulation, but also with the approval of the global poor who desperately seek to access some of the cultural and semiotic goods present in the West.62
Governmentality scholars have not missed these complexities entirely. They are well aware that disciplinary control starts at the level of our most intimate and private spheres. The problem, however, with a critique that focuses so heavily on the economizing effects of capitalism is that it suggest (even if involuntarily) the solution would be to humanize capitalism, consume less, donate more to charity, make work more rewarding, protect the environment and, in general, help business gets its soul back. The twin concepts of “caring” capitalism and “benevolent” biopolitics, I have employed here, should signal that although we are already moving towards a “new” (read: more benevolent, inclusive, therapeutic) economy, there is no such thing as a better version of capitalism. The only purpose of the current “roll"back” phase of neoliberalism, where economic conduct is being emotionalized, bureaucratic organization styles are flattened, structural adjustment plans are turned into good governance and microfinance programs, and privatization is converted into public"private partnerships, is to solve the tensions and manage the problems of previous waves of neoliberalization.63 What worries me about governmentality critique is not so much its belatedness (the fact that it does not realize that our present mode of “flexible” neoliberalism is a product of our collective dissatisfaction with a system governed purely by economic schemata) or its behaviorism (the fact that it stretches the model of action so far as to sweep over the complicit and/or subversive potentials of subjectivity). Rather, what concerns me is that, in overlooking the increased capacity of neoliberal ideology to invest individuals with veritable meaning and pleasure, Foucauldian critiques of governmentality end up (inadvertently perhaps) lobbying for a type of “bioeconomy,” which maybe is not as lethal as previous modes of accumulation, but in its ambition to care for us to death is bound to suffocate us nonetheless.
“Caring” Capitalism is Self"destructive Capitalism
If governmentality studies exaggerate the trope of economic action, thus ignoring the possibilities of capture that lurk behind our efforts to resist a cold and callous version of capitalism, autonomist Marxism suffers of the opposite problem. It shares a naturalist belief in the self"destructive capabilities of late capitalism precisely because it recognizes that the battle for the social reproduction of capitalism is being fought on territories which were once ornamental or external (if not outright inimical) to value production.64 The communicative and affective competencies (what autonomists call “general intellect”) required by the “new economy” are the very same dispositions that will allow us to short"circuit biopolitical production and “become common” again. It is just a matter of time until workers realize that capital, especially in its cognitive guise, has lost its productive function of ensuring cooperation and circulation to become a purely parasitical structure that serves no other purpose than to expropriate our common laboring efforts.65 Once this injustice is recognized nothing will stand in the way of emancipation. It seems to me that this overly optimistic celebration of the subjective potential of labor, which fits in with the greater “turn to affect” that has emerged in cultural studies, mystifies the inherently duplicitous character of affect. To place trust in the self"destructive capabilities of late capitalism seems excessively optimistic seeing how the communicative and affective competencies demanded by the “new economy” have done more to solidify the stronghold of neoliberal ideology than erode it.
Autonomist Marxism tells roughly the same story as Foucauldian governmentality critique, albeit with a few modifications: neoliberalism is replaced with post"Fordism, subjectivity with living labor, and governmentality with biopolitical production. Where Foucault talked of neoliberalism as a general philosophy that takes the market into the guiding principle for all human action, the Marxian master"category of post"Fordism grounds the neoliberal ethos in the history of 1960s and 70s labor struggles and economic shocks. In 66 (workerist) terms, post" Fordism is defined as a neoliberal tactic deliberately trying to fragment the relatively firm class alliances of the post war period through technological innovation and economic globalization, and restore the power of managerial and political elites. Technological automatization, large"scale outsourcing, non"standard employment relations, and the overall state of economic precarity (in work, housing, finance, education, citizenship practices, and affective relations) that followed these waves of neoliberalization sought to respond to shop floor disaffection over tedious and repetitive jobs, but also discipline the “revolt against work” of earlier decades.
The greatest merit of what appears to be primarily a terminological shift from neoliberalism to post"Fordism is to make labor, something which not only political economy but Marx himself neglected, the subject of historical transformation. Instead of a somewhat generalized notion of subjectivity, autonomist thought grants ontological primacy to the proletariat. Work, the master relation of all human interaction, is the place where subjectivity is produced. Or, to put it differently, the waged relation, generalized across the entire social field, is the central method of control: work on yourself, your education, your finances, your personal health, and your social relations. This over"privileging of labor might seem strange considering that, especially in places blessed with the social, cultural, and symbolic rewards of post"industrialism, capitalism is less about producing goods and services than about reproducing hospitable forms of life (e.g., bodies, subjectivities, social relations, material processes, desires, and fantasies). Yet for autonomist Marxists it is precisely these affluent contexts, where work is largely immaterial, recreational, and consumptive, that the hegemonic of flexible capitalism is most evident.67 The days of mass production may be over, at least as a formula for growth, but the logic of production now extends throughout the entire social field, collapsing labor and leisure, prosperity and sociality, philanthropy and entrepreneurship, into a so"called “social factory.” Although similar, the effects of biopolitical production or “bioeconomy” are far more severe, critical Marxists argue, than those implied by Foucauldian governmentality. Whereas neoliberal governmentality tries to make the “economic perspective […] coextensive with all of society”68, biopolitical production recognizes the limits of economic rationality and makes the “raw material of human relations”69, that is, our propensity towards language, communication, creativity, community, and everything else we are used to thinking is autonomous or alternative to capital, immanent to value production.
Several critiques have been raised against this strand of Marxism, especially in the form popularized by Hardt and Negri’s trilogy – 2 , ! and + . More loyal epigones accuse Hardt and Negri of abdicating from many of the core tenets of Marxism (e.g., explanatory primacy of relations of production, objective class interests, and the utopia of communism) and downgrading Leftist politics to a sentimental affiliation with no substantial political value.70 Feminist Marxists, on the other hand, take issue with Hardt and Negri’s gender neutrality. An entire tradition of feminist analysis on the role of women’s work in reproducing the working class, the enclosure of women’s bodies in exploitative and precarious labor conditions, and the gender hierarchies that make all of this possible have been swept away by Hardt and Negri’s superficial discussion of “affective labor.”71 Perhaps the most important accusation, however, charges members of the post"operaista Left with exaggerating the intellectual and immaterial components of modern life, both in numerical terms and as a strategic move.
Immaterial labor, broadly defined, is work which includes and relies upon activities not traditionally considered as part of work, such as tastes, opinion, sociality, communication, creativity, leisure, art and affect. It is work which regardless of its material substance, extracts value from intangible properties, like knowledge, information, sociality or emotional response. Its goal is not to produce certain economic value, social good, or cultural product, but to implode the distinctions between these categories by producing social life itself.72 Critics interject that immaterial labor describes only the experiences of liberal bourgeois subjects (e.g., entrepreneurs, freelancers, writers, artists, architects, designers, academic, etc.).73 The post"industrial age Hardt and Negri proclaim can be accepted only if we gloss over the vast majority of the world’s population employed in agriculture and industry as well as the army of low"skilled and undocumented laborers (e.g., cleaners, nannies, waiters, etc.) needed to sustain the creative juices of the few. Though Hardt and Negri go to great lengths to explain that immaterial labor is hegemonic in qualitative (not numerical) terms – immaterial labor is hegemonic in the same way industrial labor was 150 years ago74 –, critics doubt the usefulness of this gesture. Even if immaterial labor were the norm"setting mode of production which all other forms of work must emulate and be assessed against, this concept still does nothing to restore or produce cross"class alliances between computer programmers and construction workers, artists and agricultural workers. The work of communicating and translating these distinct experiences of precarity is in no way impossible, but it is also not a necessary consequence of “affective labor.”75 Still, Hardt and Negri are not that easily discouraged. They trust that, in asking labor to become more “intelligent,” capital is sawing the seeds of its own destruction. The very same qualities “new entrepreneurs” need to manage and organize themselves without the direct supervision of capital can be used for radical self"organization. In typical Marxist fashion, heightened exploitation and precarization can only work to capital’s disadvantage because eventually the system is bound to crumble under the weight of its tensions and contradictions.
What is conveniently forgotten here is that, historically, capitalism has always been very skilled at stealing the subjective potential, the “democratic distemper”76 of the workforce to make accumulation tolerable and necessary again. The very same affective and intellectual predispositions that would allow labor to spontaneously organize
itself are also what tie individuals to the gratifying, expressive, and pleasurable promises of essentially precarious and exploitative economic arrangements. Not only are the examples of the Zapatistas, the Seattle protests, and the Invisible Committee far too scattered to make real the dream of the multitude Hardt and Negri announce, but there is also not enough specification as to how or why this multi"headed subject should opt out of the benefits of immaterial work (e.g., prosperity, recognition, creativity, artistic expression, self"esteem) to join a rather demanding, lengthy and uncertain revolutionary road. As Madra and Őzselcuk accurately observe,
… there is very little discussion of why this post"Fordist subjectivity would not resist (for there are many who don’t) and perhaps even derive enjoyment from this game of ‘economic incentives,’ the neoliberal universe of individual responsibility, pursuit of self"interest, and transgressive consumption. Nor do we find a discussion of the subjective investments and affective regimes that will enable these post"Fordist subjectivities to reorient themselves ethico"politically to resist the capture of Empire and move beyond the rule of capital.77
This quietude is certainly not an exclusively Marxist symptom, but rather symptomatic of the larger “turn to affect” in social and political theory.
Affect That Will Not Wane
Contrary to Jameson’s famous declaration of the “waning of affect,” in recent years, interest in the affective potentialities of subjectivity, corporeality, and community has proliferated to form what might be called an “affective turn” with “multiple and, often contradictory, genealogical threads.”78 In social studies and humanities affect has been used mostly as a means to study socio"cultural practices and the relations they establish between various people, places, objects, and events.79 The concept is often equated with emotions, that is, “sociolinguistic fixings” (e.g., love, hate, envy, pity, etc.) belonging to persons, groups, events, or memory and narrativized through stories and images. This has happened to the dissatisfaction of more radical strands in cultural studies, which define affect as virtual impulses that do not express an experiential or sensorial condition, but the transition from one state of being to another.80 Therefore, in body studies, media theory, queer studies, and philosophy affect is mostly used to refer to precognitive, embodied experiences that escape textual and empirical methods and are closer to biological, psychological, and informational sciences.81 Finally, affect is also well"represented in critical Marxism, both in operaismo and feminist Marxist discussions of “affective labor” and broader reflections on the affective potentialities of “the commons” and “being"in"common.”82 It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a comprehensive survey of this literature. Instead, I want to recapitulate some of the problems the “affective turn” claims to resolve with regards to cultural and social theory. In doing so, I also want to express my doubts about their unreserved celebration of affect as being the solution to our theoretical impasse and the key to political transformation. After all, it is strange that what Jameson once took to be the source of loss – the deadening of affect following the decline of the humanist subject and the end of mass politics – is now being hailed as a theoretical and political opening.83
The “turn to affect” can be read as a backlash to the “cultural turn” and its obsession with constructivist models of knowing, particularly its emphasis on empiricism, language and signification. Affect aficionados complain that enlightenment"fuelled social and cultural studies, regardless of whether they employ quantitative or qualitative research methods, are too obsessed with epistemology, with observing or listening to the “speaking subject” to fully account for the role of subjectivity in social life.84 What is more, critical theory, they argue, has become so consumed with how power circulates through the social field and gets reproduced through language, habitus, or performance, that it gives us a social picture with little or no wiggle room. Human experience is fixed into predictable units of race, gender and sexuality, while our political landscape remains locked between the two poles of repression and subversion. This social ontology offers neither a complete picture of human life, nor does it exhaust our political possibilities for action. There is always something that escapes or ends up on the cutting floor of this epistemological orientation and that something is precisely that which could restore the therapeutic and transformative properties of theory.85
The missing piece is, of course, affect, this non"verbal, non"conscious, non"social residue or excess, which escapes representational methods of inquiry but which nonetheless “constitutes the very fabric of our being.”86 In psychoanalytical parlance, affect refers to the drives, energies, intensities, and variations that lie at the basis of our actions and emotions. It is a residual that escapes or cuts across our received categories of knowing and being to
remain outside any system of signification.87 Affect is not a concept that can be brought “into” the theories and methods we already have. Rather, it represents a radical attack on the current state of social and critical theory. While affect has been adopted in dissimilar and sometimes contradictory ways across various fields of interest, what unites all affect enthusiasts is the tempting promise that greater attention to the transient and excessive, the embodied and impulsive elements of life (e.g., movement, transformation, impulses, drives, emotions, relationality, temporality, virtuality, and autopoiesis) will rescue subjectivity from “paranoid” cultural theory and invest individuals with a certain degree of control over their future.88 While this vast interest in affect has opened up new lines of inquiry, relatively little has been done to unpack the subjective condition at the heart of social reproduction. Because most affect studies go to great lengths to do away with the stability but not the ethicality of selfhood, they end up drawing a linear connection between affect and progressive politics despite there not being any certainty as to what political form affect might take. We still know very little about what makes individuals either reproduce or transgress the injunctions of power. While I do not want to deny the significance of the concept, I fear that a number of affect theorists, and here I would include autonomist Marxists, have embellished the “good” side of affect at the expense of scholarly rigor and historical fact.89
There are, however, also people who do not shy away from ) the concept of affect, like Raymond Williams and then later Lawrence Grossberg, Sara Ahmed, Eva Illouz, and Slavoj Zizek. These scholars recognize that “affective economies,” which include pre"cognitive impulses and drives as well as more corporeal emotions and feelings, are essential and practical tools for understanding how we “become & in particular structures” of power. 90 Here, affect becomes a primary technology for consolidating the joys of consumerism, the hatred for gendered and racialized corporealities, communal attachments to fascist and fundamentalist milieus, the comforting effects of identity and diversity politics, and the personal rewards of exploitative and unsustainable forms of labor. Every age, from the ancient Greco"Roman heroic ideal, to the Stoic and early Christian practice of self"care, the Renaissance revival of romantic passions, the Protestant Ethic of the Industrial Age, and finally the therapeutic style of the post"war period, has its own “mode of handling problems.”91 As Eva Illouz’s work shows, ours happens to be one where emotional life becomes to economic rationality, where intimate relations are the foundation and prototype for monetary transactions and intimate relations. Contrary to Weber and Marx’s idea that modernity makes it increasingly difficult for us to lead meaningful lives and maintain social relations, Illouz demonstrates that, especially in the 20th century, with psychology and the discourse of therapy being introduced into the workplace and family life, “emotional life became imbued with the metaphors and rationality of economics; conversely, economic behavior was consistently shaped by the sphere of emotions and sentiments.”92 The result is “a broad, sweeping movement in which affect is made an essential aspect of economic behavior,” which Illouz dubs “emotional capitalism” or the “emotionalization of economic conduct.”93 Hence, in neoliberalism there is less of a difference between emotion and reason than there is between emotions that are conducive to entrepreneurial action (e.g., autonomy, adaptability, compassion, multiculturalism, philanthropy, and self"fulfillment) and those that are not (e.g., anger, anxiety, boredom, lust, and depression). While the latter must be “treated,” the rest can help realign entrepreneurial conduct with principles of social order, harmony, and meaning.
Despite drastic changes in labor organization, production technologies, statecraft, and individual conduct over the past half century, the logic of market rationality has remained essentially the same since the days of Adam Smith: capitalism is still about extracting surplus value through expropriating and exploitative means. What changed, however, are the techniques used to legitimate capitalism, which are in many ways more intelligent, therapeutic, and benevolent than anything we have known to this date. Autonomist Marxists are correct to say that affect is both that which reproduces entrepreneurial schemata and that which has the potential to subvert them. But they are too quick to celebrate the “good” side of affect instead of exploring how affect works to invest capitalism with a moral goal that individuals can passionately attach themselves to. It is this libidinal predicament and its ethico"political challenges Marxist theory should devote its attention to because, before we can learn to live"in"common, we first need to take a moment to examine how our deepest attachments to technological advancements, sprawling acts of charity, gratifying types of employment, self"actualizing forms of consumption, and exclusionary forms of attachment invest us in what remains an inherently domineering and destructive mode of social organization.
A Word on Critique
To recapitulate, this paper discussed the types of moral legitimating structures neoliberalism offers individuals to passionately attach themselves to formations that are ultimately exploitative and unsustainable. Although both Foucauldian approaches to neoliberal governmentality and critical Marxist discussions of post"Fordism
acknowledge that the only way for capitalism to perpetuate its rule is to acquire the social goal it was accused of never having, neither approach takes seriously enough the power of neoliberal ideology to put forth affective structures and the ability of individuals to derive pleasure from them.
Foucault places the subjective condition at the core of governmentality to show how the very areas we consider “quintessentially personal”94 are the places where the link to neoliberal ideology is forged. Neoliberalism neither “dupes” nor “whips us into obedience,” governmentality critique argues. Rather, it universalizes an economistic model of action by investing individuals with the necessary rights and freedoms to manage their own lives according to the twin principles of entrepreneurship and competition. While Foucault never managed to finish his lectures, which were originally supposed to deal with biopolitics, his epigones were quick to conclude that the model of economic rationality is a ubiquitous force that extends across the entire social field. This convenient characterization of neoliberal ideology as being exclusively governed by instrumental action, private interests, greed, and corruption, which in recent years has gained support from both Left and Right factions, encourages an easy retreat into individualist and consumerist solutions (e.g., ethical consumption, frugality, degrowth, multiculturalism) to systemic problems, which can only deepen our attachment to what Deleuze calls the “apparatuses of capture” we seek to resist.
Critical Marxist accounts, especially autonomist writings, have seized upon this predicament, knowing all too well that the spirit of capitalism is not exhausted in narratives of rugged individualism, ruthless competition, and excessive consumption, but includes terrains which used to be ornamental or external to the extraction of surplus value. Since the “new economy” has made itself congruent with the “raw material of human relations”95 , our affective capacities, that is, our propensity towards language, communication, creativity, and community, have become constitutive to the ethos of “new entrepreneurship.” The problem with the autonomist school, however, is that, as part of the greater “turn to affect” that has emerged in cultural studies, they are too busy celebrating the radical potential of affect to remember that the primary function of this inherently duplicitous technology is to realign entrepreneurial conduct with a romantic vision of social order, intimacy, and autonomy.
So while Foucauldian scholars suffer of a kind of behaviorism that leads them to conclude that, no matter what the differences in individual action, we have all submitted to “a kind of permanent economic tribunal,” autonomist thinkers are guilty of a naturalist belief which trusts that neoliberalism already contains the potential to “become common” because of the inherently communicative and cooperative nature of post"Fordism. Neither of them fully acknowledges the sticky ethico"political challenges that arise from a capitalist mode that offers individuals the necessary resources and strategies to bind themselves to power in voluntary and spontaneous ways. Putting aside for a moment the recurrent Leftist penchant for building solidarities as a viable answer to this aporia, I would like to make a call here for a more humble and subtle strategy that borrows from Foucault’s “critical ontology of ourselves.” In Foucault’s words,
… the critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.96
The skepticism and self"examination developed in this context should not be mistaken with the confessional obligation in Christian faith or modern therapeutic practices. Ontological critique is not meant to restore a healthy, confident self, but to shatter any trace of political certainty and moral righteousness that might invest the self in a transcendental ideal, whether it is the liberal ideal of free and autonomous selfhood or the socialist ideal of communal solidarity. While this might seem like a nihilistic or misanthropic position, one should remember that a “critical ontology of ourselves” is an ongoing practice, neither a preparatory stage nor a substitute for more militant forms of political action. Only a permanent relation of confrontation with ourselves will allow us to come to terms with the contradictions of subjectivity discussed above.
Fully aware of the genuine advances in social and medical care, material and semiotic riches, cultural expression and personal satisfaction neoliberal capital extends at least to some individuals or some parts of the globe, the real challenge becomes to refuse this caring power, even if, considering the productive effects of power, this means diminishing our own power to care. Different from Leftist celebrations of an eschatological moment in which all power is defeated and emancipation reached, the “critical ontology of ourselves” locates human freedom in the
permanent confrontation with power and interrogation of selfhood.97 While many might dismiss this ethos of critique as overly performative, aesthetic or, simply put, modest, it does not discount the need for sustained social bonds and class alliances. It simply suggests that, compared to Leftist dreams for a transcendental “commons,” which persecuted too many in the past and persuade too few in the present, the politicization of everyday life through a skeptical attitude towards the affective regimes and normalizing injunctions that interpellate us can serve as a preliminary/preparatory stage for meaningful and effective collective action. To act and live in common we must first explore the subjective complicities that tie us to neoliberal capital and learn to go beyond them.
Postscript
Yesterday was October 15th 2011, a day of global solidarity against capitalism that reached over 951 cities in 82 countries. Because this paper was written a year ago it has not taken into account the cascade of mass movements, protests, and occupations from Tunisia to Egypt, the Middle East, Wisconsin, London, Spain, Greece, and New York leading up to this day. But these events are crucial to the argument presented here, not just because of their timeliness and attractiveness, also because rising discontent with the current global economic and political situation seems to contradict my idea that capitalism, despite what critical thinkers might suggest or hope, is still able to deliver the goods (if not the material goods, then at least the semiotic goods) and invest people in constantly new fantasies of capitalist gratification and self"realization. Today, however, this belief, which is as central to the functioning of capital as our collective faith in the principles of money, debt, work, and property, seems increasingly difficult to sustain. Faced with mass unemployment and underemployment, crushing debt and austerity programs, elite corruption and greed, police brutality and military intervention, and a blatant defiance of democratic principles of governance, it is becoming apparent that the contradictions of capital have reached their zenith. The Fordist crisis of productivity dating back to the early 1970s has never been solved; it has only been moved around (from industry into finance, from factories into creative jobs, and from advanced capitalist nations to more peripheral sites) to conceal or postpone inevitable collapse. All of this has been made possible by heightened levels of police violence, arbitrary sovereign power, colonial"type interventions, and information distortions, which have made a mockery out of democracy. The 99% occupying Wall Street and other major cities around the world already know this. Neo" Keynesians and socialists of various strands, who realize how unlikely it is that the state will straighten out this crisis through higher debt ceilings and increased public spending, are beginning to suspect this. And managerial and corporate elites, desperately holding on to the final strands of power, are fearful of this.
Out of this hopeless situation, which is best described as a mass exodus of faith from under capitalism’s feet, comes a surprising feeling of hope. From Tahrir Square to Time Square we see people (people who just a few months ago would have never dreamt of getting involved in politics, let alone radical politics) coming together for no other reason than to rediscover the pleasure (and process) of being together. In that sense, occupation movements are pedagogies of democracy. They teach people the beauty (but also the challenges) of organizing life in common: how to communicate with each other, how to organize food and shelter outside conventional market channels, how to share resources, basically how to exist in common. Seen from this perspective, it seems like the spontaneous display of commonism we are witnessing today is very similar to the “surplus knowledge, surplus creativity, surplus sociality and surplus relationality”98 autonomist Marxists warned us that cognitive capitalism would produce but not know how to contain. If we do not see a clear list of demands being put forward by movements like Occupy Wall Street it is because they represent autonomous forms attachment and community that exceed regular channels of power, communication, and consumption.
But as hopeful and contagious as this spontaneous show of solidarity may be, it is still important not to confuse affect with politics. While it is incredibly moving to see people “become common” after decades of rampant individualism, mindless consumerism, political apathy, and economic nihilism, we continue to lack a clear idea about what needs to happen for this movement to win and what a win should look like. Will this be a centrist movement making “reasonable” demands for punishing the greedy and corrupt 1%, introducing more effective financial regulation, and increasing the transparency of the democratic process – demands which given the current state of affairs would be revolutionary in their own right? Or is it a movement that will “dare to fight, dare to win,” as the old Maoist slogan goes99, that is, dare to take the spirit of the occupation outside the realm of the spectacle and into the space of everyday life, outside of symbolic places like Wall Street and the London TSX and into homes, work places, and public spaces everywhere. I am not worried about the lack of clear demands or the lack of organizational structure and political maturity of the movement. My only worry is that the rapture of the event will overshadow the systemic and sophisticated logic of capital which extends far beyond Wall Street over the jobs we
demand, the homes we protect, the consumption practices we enjoy, the modern infrastructure we depend on, the class, race and gender relations we derive meaning from and so on. To do away with capitalism is to go far beyond the 1% into all of our hearts and minds. Zizek’s cautionary words at Occupy Wall Street are instructive: “Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember, carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal lives. Will there be any changes then? […] There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?” Something like Foucault’s “critical ontology of the self” is still useful here (despite its academic fancifulness). A critical examination of our relation to power and especially to capitalist fantasies of modernity, legality, and personal gratification urges each of us to answer some very difficult questions like: What do I get out of capitalism? Am I prepared to give up on these advantages? What kinds of changes am I prepared to make? How far am I willing to go? These questions do not have to be answered in isolation from the lager group, they do not have to be a personal test of strength and commitment, but they do have to be confronted in a direct and honest way for us to stand a chance together.
1 Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello. % + $ (New York: Verso, 2005).
2 Maurizio Lazzarato cited in Jason Weidner. “Governmentality, Capitalism, and Subjectivity,” - $ 23.4(2009). 405.
3 Michel Foucault, * 1 4 5 67(5 6 (Hampshire: Macmillan, 2008), 130.
4 This is particularly true for the German Ordoliberal school of economics described by Foucault in
8 According to the so"called Freiburg School of Economics, classic liberal economy, with its negative definition of state power and firm belief in human rationality, suffers from a “naive naturalism.” Neither the market, nor its driving principle of competition are natural, self"governing entities, but social goals to be attained and maintained through politico"institutional interventions. Only if government, understood in its broadest sense, provides relevant political programs, legal measures and moral orders for society to adopt an entrepreneurial shape can the market operate (or appear to operate) as a smooth entity. While other, more market"oriented, strands of neoliberalism might disagree with what would seem to be an economic theory that sanctions government intervention, the contemporary realities of the Third Way where economization and socialization are deeply embedded into one another, seem to indicate the enduring pertinence of Ordoliberal thought over, for instance, the Chicago School of Economics.
5 David Harvey. % (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
6 Jodi Dean. “Enjoying Neoliberalism,” 4.1(2008):49"50.
7 Foucault. , 217.
8 Dean. “Enjoying Neoliberalism,” 51.
9 Brian Holmes. “The Flexible Personality: For a New Cultural Critique,” European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, 2002. URL: http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/1106/holmes/en Consulted 11 November 2009. 4.
10 Slavoj Zizek. 0 (New York: Verso, 2009).
11 Nikolas Rose. - & $ * $ & $ (New York: Routledge, 1991); Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose. “Governing Economic Life,” 2 9 $ 19.1(1990):1"31; Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller. “Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government,” : $ 43.2(1992):173"205; Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, eds. * 1 0 % (1 - & (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Thomas Lemke. “’The Birth of Bio"Politics‘ – Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo"Liberal Governmentality,” 2 9 $ 30.2(2001):190"207; Thomas Lemke. “An Indigestible Meal? Foucault, Governmentality and State Theory,” * $ & : $ 15(2007) URL: http://www.thomaslemkeweb.de/publikationen/IndigestibleMealfinal5.pdf. consulted 11 June 2008.
12 Wendy Brown quoted in Dean, “Enjoying Neoliberalism,” 53.
13 Foucault, , 330.
14 Lois McNay. “Self as Enterprise. Dilemmas of Control and Resistance in Foucault’s ,” 0 9 $ 26.6(2009), 61.
15 Foucault, , 241.
16 Thomas Lemke. “’The Birth of Bio"Politics‘ – Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo"Liberal Governmentality,“ 201.
17 Ibid.; Wendy Brown. “Neo"Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy,” 9 2& 7.1(2003).
18 Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose. “Governing Economic Life”; Nikolas Rose. “Governing ‘Advanced’ Liberal Democracies,” * 1 0 % (1 - & Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 37"64; Barbara Cruikshank. “Revolutions Within: Self"Government and Self"Esteem,” * 1 0 % (1 - & . Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 231"51.
19 Nikolas Rose. “Community, Citizenship, and the Third Way,” & $ 43.9(2000):1385" 411; Wendy Brown. & * / 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Jamie Peck. “Zombie Neoliberalism and the Ambidextrous State,” 14.1(2010):104"10.
20 Yahya M. Madra and Ceren Őzselcuk. “: and Antagonism in the Forms of the Commune: A Critique of Biopolitical Subjectivity,” ! " 22.3(2010). 484"5.
21 Ibid., 485.
22 Michel Foucault cited in Lemke, “’The Birth of Bio"Politics‘ – Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo"Liberal Governmentality,“ 207.
23 Rose, “Community, Citizenship, and the Third Way”; Holmes, “The Flexible Personality”; Engin Isin. “The Neurotic Citizen,” ) $ 8.3(2004):217"35. Boltanski and Chiapello, $ ; Eva Illouz. / * ! 2 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007); Anne"Marie Fortier. “Proximity by Design? Affective Citizenship and the Management of Unease,” ) $ 14.1; Jonathan Franzen. (London: Harper Perennial, 2001), 45"6.
24 Holmes, “The Flexible Personality”; Boltanksi and Chiapello, $
25 Zizek, “RSA Animate " First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.”
26 Boltanksi and Chiapello, $
27 Nick Dyer"Whiteford. (! "* $ (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 106.
28 Jason Read. “A Genealogy of 2 : Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity,” $ 6(2009):25"36; Norbert Bolz. “Vom nehmenden zum sorgenden Kapitalismus.“ TREND Büro, 2009. URL: http://www.trendbuero.de/index.php?f_categoryId=155&f_articleId=3381. Consulted 22 June 2009.
29 David Brooks. * % + , + - . (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000)
30 Ibid., 43.
31 Ibid., 10.
32 Richard Florida. & + / # 0 1 0 2& 1 (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
33 Andrew Ross. % ( * # / (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 124.
34 Jamie Peck. “Struggling with the Creative Class,” / : , & 29.4(2005). 741.
35 Slavoj Zizek. 3 (London: Profile Books, 2008), 16.
36 Ibid., 23.
37 Foucault, , 149.
38 Ibid., 219.
39 Ibid., 147.
40 Ibid., 242.
41 Lemke, “’The Birth of Bio"Politics‘ – Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo"Liberal Governmentality,” 95.
42 Foucault, , 330.
43 Michel Foucault. $ 0 0 * 1
5 66(5 67 (New York: Palgrave, 2007).
44 Michel Foucault. “The Subject and Power,” ! * + 8 2 # 5 ;<(5 7<. James D. Faubion ed. (New York: The New Press, 2001). 326.
45 Madra and Őzselcuk, “: and Antagonism in the Form of the Commune,” 485.
46 Giorgio Agamben. $ * $ & + 1 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
47 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. ! * # 2 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004).
48 Agamben, $ , 6.
49 Andrew Neal. “Goodbye War on Terror? Foucault and Butler on Discourses of Law, War, and Exceptionalism,” 0 $ # . Michael Dillon and Andrew W. Neal eds. (London: Palgrave, 2008), 45.
50 Michael Dillon and Julian Reid. “Global Liberal Governance: Biopolitics, Security and War,” ! * : / $ 20.1(2001):41"66; Michael Dillon and Julian Reid. 1 # # * = ! 1 1 & (New York: Routledge, 2009); Michael Shapiro, Jenny Edkins and Veronique Pin"Fat, eds. $ & 1 & * + - (New York: Routledge, 2004); Elizabeth Dauphinee and Christina Masters, eds. 1 + # * 1 & 0 0 $ & & (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
51 Agamben, $ , 3.
52 See Michel Foucault. ' $ * + > , The Tanner Lectures on Human Value, Stanford University: 10 and 16 October 1979. URL: http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/foucault81.pdf, consulted 5 March 2010; Michel Foucault. “The Subject and Power,” ! * + 8 2 # 5 ;<(5 7<. James D. Faubion ed. (New York: The New Press, 2001), 326"64. Hannah Arendt offers a slightly different but equally useful genealogy of modern biopolitics. The truly radical thing about the rise of the third estate in 1789 and the plebeian revolutions of 1848, Arendt explains in ' & (1990), was that, for the first time in Western history, the purpose of political revolt was to resolve the miserable condition of the poor, in other words, to restore the original unity between the eople and the eople, the sovereign subjects of rule and the impoverished masses. This reorientation towards the body politic not only radically changed the course of modern politics in terms decision"making structures, juridical norms, and ideological systems, it also invested governmental power with a benevolent dimension, which culminated in the grandiloquent modernization plans of Soviet Russia and New Deal America, the expansive nationalism of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the social justice ideals of the welfare state, and the market rationalism of present day liberal internationalism. Regardless of the differences between these mass designs, they all share a hitherto ignored normative ambition to align social life, both public and private, political and physical, with certain principles of order, justice, and dignity. This is not to discount the diabolic consequences all biopolitical plans to design life on a mass scale inevitably end in, especially when “murderous power of the sovereign’s sword and the productive, vitalist power of biopolitics” meet like in German Nazism and Soviet Stalinism (Prozorov 2007:57). It is only to remind us that biopolitics, in its original form, is not necessarily violent or not visibly so.
53 Sergei Prozorov. “The Unrequited Love of Power: Biopolitical Investment and the Refusal of Care.” $ 4(2007). 54.
54 Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” 333.
55 Ibid., 334"5.
56 Prozorov, “The Unrequited Love of Power,” 66.
57 Albert Hirschman. / * / (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
58 Boltanki and Chiapello, $ , 20.
59 Couze Venn. “Neoliberal Political Economy, Biopolitics and Colonialism: A Transcolonial Genealogy of Inequality,” 0 9 $ 26.6(2009). 211.
60 Hardt and Negri, ! , 109; McNay, “Self as Enterprise”, 57.
61 Couze, “Neoliberal Political Economy, Biopolitics and Colonialism.”
62 Nevzat Soguk, “Reflections on the ‘Orientalized Orientals’,” & 18(1993):361"84; James Ferguson. - $ + * % # ' (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
63 Peck, “Zombie Neoliberalism,” 106.
64 Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt, eds. / * (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Hardt and Negri, 2 ; Hardt and Negri. ! ; Paolo Virno.! (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004); Sylvere Lotringer and Christian Marazzi. * ( (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007); Christian Marazzi. 1 * % + 2 # 2 (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2008); Franco Berardi. $ # * (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009).
65 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. + (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009).
66 Although originally two distinct Italian movements, these days and are being used interchangeably. This is in great part owed to Hardt and Negri’s best"selling manifestos 2 and ! (2000, 2004), which have on the one hand, translated and popularized Italian Marxist thought for the English"
speaking public and, on the other hand, inadvertently condensed what continues to remain (not just in Italy) a debate with many dissonant voices.
67 Hardt and Negri, 2 , 109.
68 Read, ! ( , 32.
69 The Invisible Committee. / (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e):2009).
70 Daniel McGee. “Post"Marxism: The Opiate of the Intellectuals,” ! 1 ? 58.2(1997):201"25; Timothy Brennan. “The Empire’s New Clothes,” / @ 29(2005):337"67.
71 Silvia Federici. “Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint,” 3 37(2010). URL: http://www.variant.org.uk/37texts/Variant37.html#L9, consulted 10 September 2010.
72 Hardt and Negri, ! , 108.
73 Brennan, “The Empire’s New Clothes.”
74 Hardt and Negri, ! , 109.
75 Brett Nielson and Ned Rossiter, “Precarity as Political Concept, or, Fordism as Exception,” 0 9 $ 25.7"8(2008). 51"72.
76 Holmes, “The Flexible Personality.”
77 Madra and Őzselcuk, “Juissance and Antagonism in the Forms of the Commune,” 486.
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86 Ibid., 549.
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88 Hemmings, “Invoking Affect,” 552"3.
89 Ibid., 555.
90 Ahmed, 2 , 10. Original emphasis; Lawrence Grossberg. # - - ' * & (New York: Routledge, 1992); Illouz, / .
91 Illouz, / , 6.
92 Ibid., 60.
93 Ibid., 5. Here, I refuse to distinguish between affect and emotion, as Massumi and others demand (2002), because it seems to me it is impossible to talk of affect in any meaningful (academic) way outside social structures and linguistic constructs, which perhaps explains why so many discussions of affect remain vague, solipsistic, and profoundly apolitical. Divorcing affect from its corporeal and social anchoring is also what allows an exceedingly celebratory approach to the term.
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