Managerialism as Ideology

Abstract

A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in the managerial society as a token of material-commercial progress. Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality under the ‘managerialisation of everything’? Managerialisation — making something managerial — turns every eventuality of human existence into a manageable issue. Simultaneously, it standardises everything while promising individualism and individuality. You no longer have a sex-life but you ‘Manage Your Sex Life’; we do not have real marriages but we manage our marriages, we do no longer have an education but managers who manage education.¹⁰⁴ The resulting managerial society is governed by a painful demand for performance inflicted on everyone. Managerialism engineers the free competition among unequally equipped managerial subjects. Under its ideological banner of globalisation it has curtailed the prerogatives and national sovereignties unleashing global corporations and their ideological resources. That this managerial order involves economic, social, political, cultural, ideological, and intellectual domination may be a regrettable yet also promising development.