Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Near Future Series) - Softcover

Brown, Wendy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1935408542 ISBN 13: 9781935408543

Publisher: Zone Books, 2017

Synopsis

Neoliberal rationality ― ubiquitous today in statecraft and the workplace, in jurisprudence, education, and culture ― remakes everything and everyone in the image of homo oeconomicus. What happens when this rationality transposes the constituent elements of democracy into an economic register? In vivid detail, Wendy Brown explains how democracy itself is imperiled.

The demos disintegrates into bits of human capital; concerns with justice cede to the mandates of growth rates, credit ratings, and investment climates; liberty submits to the imperative of human capital appreciation; equality dissolves into market competition; and popular sovereignty grows incoherent. Liberal democratic practices may not survive these transformations. Radical democratic dreams may not either.

In an original and compelling theoretical argument, Brown explains how and why neoliberal reason undoes the political form and political imaginary it falsely promises to secure and reinvigorate. Through meticulous analyses of neoliberalized law, political practices, governance, and education, she charts the new common sense.

Undoing the Demos makes clear that, far from being the lodestar of the twenty-first century, a future for democracy depends upon it becoming an object of struggle and rethinking.

About this title

About the Author

A prize-winning examination of why nation-states wall themselves off despite widespread proclamations of global connectedness.

Edition details

• Publisher: Zone Books
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1935408542
• ISBN 13: 9781935408543
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296