Neoliberalism, Racism, and Violation

Abstract

A good deal of confusion attends the writing on neoliberalism, since scholars take different entry points and make use of different units of analysis, focusing variously on ideology, policy, and governance. However, this difficult terrain deserves to become even more complex, since neoliberalism is also a social and cultural formation, though it is not usually analyzed as such. In the justified focus on the policy and practice of privatization and deregulation at the level of markets, not enough attention has been given to the project of “interrogat[ing] the experiential contradictions at the core of neoliberal capitalism” (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2000, p. 298). Neoliberalism powerfully recomposes experience in the present with effects on public life, relationships, and identities (Giroux, 2008). The contemporary turn to punishment in the state and civil society is a crucial aspect of this recomposition; without an adequate understanding of this shift, our understanding of neoliberalism itself is incomplete. This chapter aims to contribute to this analytic project and, in the process, to develop resources for the imagination of alternatives to this encompassing condition.