Neoliberal Techniques of Social Suffering: Political Resistance and Critical Theory from Latin America and Spain 9781666915075, 9781666915099, 9781666915082, 1666915076

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Neoliberal Techniques of Social Suffering

Neoliberal Techniques of Social Suffering Political Resistance and Critical Theory from Latin America and Spain Edited by Laura Quintana and Nuria Sánchez Madrid

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. This volume counted with the financial aid of the Interuniversitary Program in Culture of Legality H2019/HUM-5699 (ON TRUST-CM), awarded by the Community of Madrid and the European Social Fund, and is part of the Research Project Labor Precarity, Body and Damaged Life. An Inquiry on Social Philosophy (PID2019–105803GB-I0), funded by the Government of Spain. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Quintana, Laura, editor. | Sánchez Madrid, Nuria, editor.   Title: Neoliberal techniques of social suffering : political resistance and     critical theory from Latin America and Spain / edited by Laura Quintana     and Nuria Sánchez Madrid.   Description: Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2023] | Includes     bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "This volume displays a     critical analysis of the political agenda that has, in the last decades,     triggered multifaceted forms of precarization and social exclusion of     marginalized groups in Latin America and Spain"-- Provided by publisher.       Identifiers: LCCN 2023024637 (print) | LCCN 2023024638 (ebook) | ISBN     9781666915075 (cloth : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781666915099 (paperback) | ISBN 9781666915082 (epub)   Subjects: LCSH: Neoliberalism. | Capitalism. | Human capital. |     Suffering--Social aspects. | Marginality, Social. | Human security.  Classification: LCC JC574 .N4536 2023  (print) | LCC JC574  (ebook) | DDC     320.51--dc23/eng/20230629  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024637 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024638 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Introduction: Social Suffering and Political Agency against Neoliberal Disrepair Laura Quintana and Nuria Sánchez Madrid PART I: DISTORTING THE SOCIAL CONTRACT. THE CHALLENGE OF ADDRESSING NEOLIBERAL CULTURAL POLITICS Chapter 1: Clash of Narratives: The Neoliberal Systemic Doctrine as Cause of Second-Order Suffering Alessandro Pinzani Chapter 2: The Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism: Housing Financialization, Transformations of Work, and Institutional Challenges in Today’s Spain Nuria Sánchez Madrid PART II: NEOLIBERAL SUBJECTIVATION AND THE EFFECTS OF DEPOLITICIZING PSYCHIC SUFFERING

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Chapter 3: Economics Is the Continuation of Psychology by Other Means: Psychic Suffering and Neoliberalism as a Moral Economy 45 Vladimir Safatle Chapter 4: Neoliberalism and Psychological Suffering: The Political Potential of Discontent Rodrigo Castro Orellana

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Chapter 5: Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: The Perils of Modern Subjectivity in Contemporary Mexico Zenia Yébenes PART III: DISCLOSING THE POLITICS OF BODILY EXPLOITATION AND DEATH UNDERGIRDING NEOLIBERAL RATIONALITY

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Chapter 6: Insecurity as a Form of Government: Transformations in the Sphere of Work and the Politics of Bodies in Neoliberal Societies 105 Pablo López Álvarez Chapter 7: Making a Living, Producing a Dignified Death: Experiences of Precarity, Expectations for the Future, and Processes of Political Subjectivization María Inés Fernández Álvarez Chapter 8: Governing through a Politics of Death: Neoliberalism and the Ruination of Life Laura Quintana Index

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About the Contributors



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Introduction Social Suffering and Political Agency against Neoliberal Disrepair Laura Quintana and Nuria Sánchez Madrid

This volume is the result of the critical and political commitment of various Latin American and Spanish philosophers who share a critical approach to the global “stealth revolution”1 that neoliberalism has triggered in recent decades, in which the well-being and reproduction of life is forced to adapt to a system devastating for both humans and non-humans. With the term social suffering, we refer to experiences of distress, deterioration, and harm that are “actively created and distributed by a social order.”2 In this book, we are interested in how neoliberalism has not only produced and distributed manifold forms of damage affecting bodies and territories, but also how it has operated through a regulated administration of social suffering deployed through different methods and devices. Neoliberalism has been considered a hegemonic ideological project,3 a program and public policy,4 as well as a form of the state focused on order and surveillance5 and increasingly enmeshed with powerful economic groups and corporate interests.6 At the same time, it has been regarded as a form of rationality governing the speakable, the intelligible, and the criteria of truth in all domains of life,7 to the point of seeking a complete “social reengineering” with visible effects of subjectivation (see Safatle in this volume). As shown by David Harvey, the implementation of neoliberal programs can be traced back to the early 1980s in Latin America, particularly in Chile with the Pinochet dictatorship and then throughout Latin America, in order to promote the structural adjustment programs dictated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.8 These plans were designed to force vii

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countries indebted to these entities to implement a series of economic measures in exchange for new loans to pay off old debts, and were intended to boost economic growth in these countries through what was conceived as “shock therapy for the free market.”9 These neoliberal measures included “austerity” (cutbacks in public investment), the privatization of services and public goods; liberalization (for example, cutting subsidies for agriculture, internal industrialization, and taxes for the wealthiest) and deregulation, allowing more flexibility in labor conditions and thus making work increasingly insecure and informal. As is widely accepted, this neoliberal transformation, first implemented in the periphery, later became a model for the center,10 with effects still visible, and even intensified, today. Such measures reduced the state’s function to that of providing security conditions for large capital investments, promoting public policies designed to protect order and control any variables that might affect economic growth and financial stability. Law thus becomes an instrument of legitimation of neoliberal interventions. At the same time, every aspect of life is interpreted in terms of its relationship or value to the market, understood as a given reality to which everyone must adjust in one way or another. Under this system, social problems are treated as mere administrative issues, not relevant to political conflict, to the point of being pathologized (see Pinzani and Safatle in this volume). Meanwhile, the dismantling of public, protectionist, and redistributive policies produces insecure and precarious social conditions, held to be the justified consequences of the pursuit of economic growth geared toward capital accumulation rather than meeting social goals.11 Neoliberal capitalism thus produces heightened precarity, an abandonment of subjects to their fate, and increased social insecurity. These forms of social suffering are transformed by neoliberalism into individual issues to be addressed via practices and discourses of self-responsibility (self-realization and self-improvement), accumulation of debt for individual survival, and “empowerment” through continuous self-training and competitiveness, leaving subjects to feel solely responsible for their precarious living conditions (see Castro Orellana and López Álvarez in this volume). Social questions are thus depoliticized and their material conditions are obscured as merely personal, and even pathologized manifestations: an experience of harm to be dealt with by each individual in the midst of their opaque, divergent, and ambiguous circumstances (see Zenia Yébenes in this volume). Moreover, increasingly in the Global South and in some parts of the Global North, areas of social abandonment are rapidly multiplying.12 These are places consigned to marginalization through consciously programmed neglect: public investment is slashed and people inhabiting these regions are left to die. These territories recurrently become “sacrificial zones”13

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inhabited by racialized and marginalized people, where industrial and toxic waste derived from accelerated consumption and production is deposited and accumulated. This damage gradually depletes and incapacitates bodies and territories in violence dispersed across space and time. These forms of “slow violence,”14 of course, can, and often do, coexist with forms of visible violence. In fact, under neoliberalism, even death can be made profitable in places considered to be spaces of exception where—it is assumed—anything is permissible to achieve their integration into the ruthless dynamics of global capital. Neoliberalism thus governs through the mobilization and intensification of ancient colonial divisions that distinguish between center and periphery. Although through this rationality, the periphery is progressively extended so that it continually transverses the center, these demarcations remain visible—in the Global South, for example, the power to kill becomes more evidently profitable (see Quintana in this volume). We mentioned that while neoliberalism requires social suffering to operate, it simultaneously denies this damage by reducing it to an individual dimension, or as mere externality (that is, phenomena which exceed the cost and profit calculations of corporate accounting), in this way evading admission of responsibility. In fact, neoliberalism needs to produce conditions of precariousness, uncertainty, and insecurity in order to increase capital accumulation: wealth that has increasingly enriched the few and impoverished the majority. The result is a greatly impoverished Global South, and a Global North that is increasingly marked by marginalization and poverty. In 2016, Oxfam published an infamous report according to which the wealthiest sixty-two people owned more than the poorest half of the world.15 What’s more, the “wealth of the richest 1 percent had been increasing swiftly since 2008, along with their share of total wealth, to the point that by 2016 the 1 percent had more wealth than the rest of the world’s population combined, for the first time.”16 While neoliberal interventions and their structural adjustment programs intended to boost growth (in the narrow and problematic terms of GDP), the opposite occurred. The Global South “lost an average of $480 billion per year in potential GDP during the 1980s and 1990s as a result of structural adjustment.”17 Taking into account this widespread perception of enduring systemic social devastation, the editors of this volume encouraged authors from Latin America and Spain to specifically address the demands and forms of experience that have become the main sources of the bodily and territorial damage characteristic of contemporary life. The volume focuses on two phenomena that shape the anxieties of the present. The first of these is the increase in mental health disturbances and corporeal exploitation, in turn prompting the growth of biomedical firms intended to “fix” the problems preventing subjects from maintaining their performance at work. The second covers the experience of dispossession and destruction of lands, forms of life, and means

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of subsistence endured by communities, particularly in the Global South, as is the case in Latin America. Two other major aspects emphasizing social suffering run through the essays collected here. On the one hand, attention is paid to the way damage resulting from neoliberalism affects people’s lived experience, is inscribed in their bodies, and gives rise to ambiguous, opaque, and sometimes problematic emotions. Some of these emotions lock the subjects into affective feedback loops that both emerge from their frustration and intensify it, as occurs in certain manifestations of resentment (see Pinzani and Sánchez-Madrid in this volume). At the same time, however, we insist on the desire and the agency of the subjects marked by damage. As people, we are singular and complex, and even while trapped in highly unlivable situations, we are able to forge a daily life; to persist (see Fernández Álvarez in this volume); and, on some occasions, even resist the brutal conditions that gave rise to social suffering and reverse some of their effects (see Quintana in this volume). This resistance is possible through creative practice of bonding between humans and non-humans as well as creating other materialities, labor practices, forms of life, and experiences of time. We hope to collaborate with such efforts through the reflections contained in this book. The first section of the volume—“Distorting the Social Contract. The Challenge of Addressing Neoliberal Cultural Politics”—addresses the present cultural hegemony attained by the neoliberal system of commodification and human exploitation, and examines some relevant effects of this cultural turn brought about in southern Europe and Latin America. Alessandro Pinzani (UFSC, Brazil) focuses his chapter on the enthusiastic endorsement of neoliberal cultural and material restrictions by those most harmed by these very measures—a key concept for understanding the recent successes of regressive populism. The author inspects the contradictory features of neoliberalism as a source of novel “ethical” patterns while dissecting the ideological colonization these entail. This contribution gives an account of multilevel social suffering18 ensuing from the destruction of social interconnectedness, as well as the individualism and isolation fostered by the neoliberal mind. Pinzani also highlights the depoliticizing effects of these pathologies of neoliberalism, insofar as subjects deem their failures personal shortcomings, and find solace in their malaise by scapegoating others. In her chapter, Nuria Sánchez Madrid addresses the role of resentment in the populist backlash that has occurred in Spain in recent years. She examines how resentment is an emotion fracturing society between “we” and “they,” a notion crucial to current alt-right and conservative ideas on the role of the state. This contribution attempts to shed light on the formation of a new model of subjectivity which views economic failures and defeats as the outcome of a self-committed neglect, focusing on

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the homo oeconomicus pedagogy underpinning the conservative agenda in southwest Europe. The second part of the volume—“Neoliberal Subjectivation and The Effects of Depoliticizing Psychic Suffering”—analyzes the psychological suffering resulting from the reduction of human beings and their bodies to “human capital”19 as a way of more accurately grasping the socially embedded character of an abstract economic system such as neoliberalism. Within this critical framework, Vladimir Safatle (Univ. of Sâo Paulo, Brazil) engages with the processes that translate the neoliberal agenda into a moral and psychological framework able to adapt subjects to the demand for unbounded productivity, in doing so convincing them that their incapacities to meet the requirements of their workplace reflect a personal failure. This chapter concentrates on the ways that state intervention educates society to quietly accept a set of norms that make it impossible to live with dignity. Safatle dissects the evolution of the clinical treatment of depression and describes how it completely overtook the emergence of neurosis, a diagnosis with the opportunity to link psychological suffering and social oppression. Rodrigo Castro-Orellana (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain), provides a critical account of the social spread of psy-knowledge and of the psychologization of society as a biopolitical tool producing a new model of subjectivity that sacrifices mobilizing rage for isolating depression. This contribution aims to reframe the term “happiness,” to distance it from the neoliberal conception of happiness as emotional discipline necessary for enduring a higher level of selfexploitation. Continuing in this analytical vein, Zenia Yébenes (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Autonomous National University of Mexico [UNAM], Mexico) broaches the disillusionment with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s promise of institutional Mexican postneoliberalism. The contribution takes issue with the public legitimation of the value of austerity in Mexico, measures that prevent tax reform able to finance ambitious social policies. The author also tackles the subjective imaginaries found in current Mexican society resulting from the imperatives and “common sense” promoted by neoliberal subjectivation. Yébenes gives a voice to outcast subjects like Rodrigo, who takes methamphetamines not recreationally, but in order to increase productivity at work. In this way, the chapter analyzes how the subject becomes a battlefield exposed to contradictory demands and reacts with violence and sadistic drives against himself. The third section—“Disclosing the Politics of Bodily Exploitation and Death Undergirding Neoliberal Rationality”—compiles chapters that analyze the logics of social negation of the body and its finitude which produce necro-politics—a nihilist view of politics as a set of tasks related to the reproduction of life. This group of papers examines the material and symbolic

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requirements for living well, sharing our precarity and vulnerability with others, and preserving human dignity. Pablo López Álvarez (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain) explores the contemporary transformations of work to appraise the ways in which neoliberal governmentality oppresses human life, and examines its consequences in southern Europe. The author engages in a dialogue with the “centrality of work” claimed by scholars such as Jean-Philippe Deranty, Keith Breen, Emmanuel Renault, and Alexis Cukier, as this phenomenon helps shed light on the forms of violence and social suffering of the present. He further explores the causes underpinning the crisis of legitimacy of capitalism post-2008, addressing the rhetorical devices justifying this system of unbounded commodification and increased precariousness of life. Finally, this author claims a politicization of health at the workplace and examines the constitutional nature of labor rights. María Inés Fernández Álvarez (CONICET, Argentina) uses a collaborative ethnographic standpoint to focus on popular economies established by workers in the Once neighborhood in Buenos Aires as sources of resistance against neoliberal “anthropological mutation.”20 Fernández Álvarez shows how the economy determines forms of life and how the default framework that determines which jobs are recognized and valued damages the moral and civil standing of the subject, as she perceives her inability to partake in the construction and conservation of a common space. The author analyzes how mercantile and ethical considerations are intertwined in the most precarious layers of the urban economy in Latin American countries, challenging the universality of mainstream ideas of citizenship. In the final chapter of this volume, Laura Quintana (Univ. de los Andes, Colombia) elaborates on the ruinous effects stemming from the reduction of life to extractable energies, encompassing human beings, territories, and natural resources. This chapter examines the “politics of death” triggered by the recent neoliberal hegemony in Colombia, exploring its colonial assumptions. Quintana then contrasts this brutal takeover with the ecological resistance of people living in Colombia’s northern Cauca to guarantee that they can live a “livable life”—as coined by Judith Butler,21 or “dignified life”—as they themselves call it—a basic right for all Earth dwellers. Quintana’s text also highlights the way that these popular movements have inspired a reframing of the goals of national progressive parties, as confirmed by Gustavo Petro’s recent electoral victory. The editors of the volume identified several common concerns in the approaches compiled in this book, which nevertheless highlight the specific features underpinning each ecological, social, and civil context. This intellectual cooperation among Latin American and Spanish scholars in the fields of critical theory and social philosophy is intended to overcome shortcomings of the colonialist frameworks long present in European philosophy, as well as to open new avenues of shared research that benefit both sides of this

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horizontal conversation. Social life in countries such as Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico—the main countries analyzed in the chapters of this volume—has experienced analogous pressures and aggressions ensuing from the legitimation of neoliberal reason. Yet their forms of resistance display a wide range of heterogeneous articulations that merit deep enquiry able to deliver a careful account of both the source of malaise, and the various forms of resistance practiced in the aforementioned mentioned nations. Highlighting this diversity of resistances against the reduction of human beings to productive and financial resources is crucial to the critical approach this volume proposes as a way of increasing global awareness of the political power of common people. The attention paid to features such as ideology, mental health, and bodily and territorial exploitation emphasizes the material nature of the accounts gathered, intending to make visible the “objective” aspects of models of exploitation that are concealed under the silent suffering of isolated subjects. Against this claim, several chapters reveal the emancipatory hope emerging from the rather disoriented and blurry discourses of the self-displayed by the individuals appearing throughout the volume. While many of these characters seem trapped in existential dead ends as a result of labor exploitation, the subjective demands they still harbor is a telling feature of their hope and desire to “live well.” In our view, resentment, rage, and depression are not to be considered negative emotions or mental disturbances, but sources of great potential in forging social change on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, building new bonds of solidarity to counter the hegemonic epistemic virtues cultivated by neoliberalism. The authors’ main commitment has been to voice the shared concern of contemporary Spanish and Latin American societies to build new conceptions of the public and the common through the mobilization of affects usually disavowed in political theory. If, in Ancient Greece, the idea of strengthening the most vulnerable and weakest was deplored as the art of sophists, this collection of works explores the other side of our social world to revive grassroots strategies of resistance and emancipation able to bring about new distributions of power, welfare, and discursive legitimation and, in this way extend our goal of creating a radically democratic world. NOTES 1. Brown, Undoing the Demos. 2. Das, Critical Events; Kleinman, Das & Lock, Social Suffering. 3. Duménil & Lévy, Capital Resurgent; Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. 4. Brenner & Theodore, “Variegated neoliberalization: Geographies, modalities, pathways.”

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5. Peck & Tickell, “Neoliberalizing space.” 6. Wollin, Sheldon. Democracy Incorporated. 7. Brown, “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and DeDemocratization,” 693; Gago, Neoliberalism from Below. 8. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. 9. Hickel. The Divide, 23. 10. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 9. 11. Hickel, Less is More, 89. 12. Biehl, Vita. 13. Lerner, Sacrifice Zones. 14. Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. 15. Oxfam, Annual report 2016. 16. Hickel, “Is global inequality getting better or worse?,” 2228. 17. Hickel, “Is global inequality getting better or worse?,” 2215. 18. Zurn, “Social pathologies as second-order disorders.” 19. Becker, Human Capital. 20. Pasolini 1991 21. Zaharijević & Bojanić. “The Trajectories of the Concept of Life in Judith Butler’s Thought.”

REFERENCES Biehl, Joao. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Becker, Gary S. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994. Brown, Wendy. “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization.” Political Theory 34/6. (2006): 690–714. ———. Undoing the Demos. Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books, 2015. Brenner, N.; Peck, J.; Theodore, N. “Variegated neoliberalization: Geographies, modalities, pathways.” Global Networks 10, (2010): 182–222. Das, Veena. Critical Events. An Anthropological Perspective in Contemporary India. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Duménil, G. y Lévy, D. Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. Gago, Verónica, Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Hickel, Jason. “Is global inequality getting better or worse? A critique of the World Bank’s convergence narrative.” Third World Quarterly 38:10. (2017): 2208–22, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2017.1333414.

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———. The Divide. A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions. London: William Heinemann, 2017. ———. Less Is More. London: William Heinemann, 2020. Kleinman, Arthur; Veena Das y Margaret’ Lock. Social Suffering. Berkeley: University of California, 1997. Lerner, Steve. Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States. Cambridge MA: MIT, 2012. Nixon, Robert. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2011. Oxfam. Annual Report 2016: https:​//​oxfamilibrary​.openrepository​.com​/bitstream​ /handle ​ / 10546​ / 620321​ / ar​ - edp​ - annual​ - report​ - 2016 ​ - 120517 ​ - en ​ . pdf;jsessionid​ =91FED6EA0CE39EEA7182B0B6998A0B98​?sequence​=1. Pasolini, Pier Paolo, Lutheran Letters. Transl. by Stuart Hood. Carcanet Press, 1991. Peck, Jamie and Tickell, Adam. “Neoliberalizing space.” Antipode 34. (2002): 380–404. Wollin, Sheldon. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Zaharijević, Adriana/Sanja Milutinović Bojanić. “The Trajectories of the Concept of Life in Judith Butler’s Thought.” Isegoría, no. 56 (2017): 169–85. https:​//​doi​.org​ /10​.3989​/isegoria​.2017​.056​.08. Zurn, Christopher F., “Social pathologies as second-order disorders.” In: Petherbridge, D. (ed.). Axel Honneth: Critical Essays: With a Reply by Axel Honneth, pp. 345–70. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

PART I

Distorting the Social Contract. The Challenge of Addressing Neoliberal Cultural Politics

1

Chapter 1

Clash of Narratives The Neoliberal Systemic Doctrine as Cause of Second-Order Suffering Alessandro Pinzani

This chapter begins by examining a curious and puzzling phenomenon: in recent decades, neoliberal discourse has been, and continues to be, extremely successful among electorates around the world, and, more surprisingly, even among the groups most directly harmed by the reforms of the welfare state introduced and justified through neoliberal arguments.1 What are the causes of this triumph? Why do voters enthusiastically embrace political proposals promising cuts to public services, benefits, and welfare, forcing them to diminish their demands on the state? Answering these questions requires a focus on the worldviews and values that underlie neoliberal economic and political proposals. In the following, therefore, I will first characterize neoliberalism as a systemic doctrine; and then present its ethical view of the good life and its internal contradictions. In doing so, I will highlight different forms of social suffering inflicted by the neoliberal systemic doctrine, particularly on those who embrace it. NEOLIBERALISM AS A SYSTEMIC DOCTRINE The term “neoliberalism” is a contested one, and few of the authors commonly considered to belong to this movement use the term. One noteworthy exception was a debate among the members of the Mount Pèlerin Society regarding their relation to classical liberalism and on whether they should consider themselves to be “neoliberals.”2 In any case, the term is mostly used 3

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Alessandro Pinzan

by critics and, therefore, tainted with negative connotations. It is nevertheless possible to identify a group of intellectuals (academics, journalists, and opinion-makers) forming what has been called a “thought collective,” organized around certain central ideas and values, and who were very active in promoting these concepts in academia and politics from the 1950s onward.3 In this way, the use of the term ‘neoliberalism’ is also justified in an academic context. Neoliberalism has been defined in many ways: as an ideology, an economic doctrine, a governing strategy, a form of rationality, or a way of shaping subjects.4 Although all these views contain some truth, I suggest that we approach neoliberalism as a systemic doctrine.5 In using the term “systemic doctrine,” I indicate, first, a set of beliefs that seek to explain reality, as well as the values based on these beliefs. Secondly, this complex of beliefs and values must be coherent enough to be mobilized for describing and explaining potentially every aspect of human life (our relation to nature, society, other human beings, and, sometimes, a preternatural, transcendent dimension). Finally, it offers the basis for a system of norms and social practices that aim at shaping or reshaping human life according to the abovementioned beliefs and values (e.g., by inspiring state policies). Neoliberals hold that reality should be understood and explained from the perspective of the market, because market mechanisms are deemed capable of maximizing individual freedom. Here we must note the implicit definition of freedom as absence of coercion, considered to be the supreme value to be defended against other values (e.g., against freedom from want or against material conceptions of the common good). For this reason, defenders of neoliberalism firmly believe in “the priority of price mechanism, free enterprise, the system of competition, and a strong and impartial state.”6 This leads to the rise of specific ethical and social norms that then translate into social practices—although this has proven to be more difficult than envisioned by neoliberal authors, and has demanded a massive use of state power.7 My claim is that the success of the neoliberal systemic doctrine among voters and politicians alike is owed precisely to its ethical content: its values and corresponding social and moral norms, rather than its beliefs about the market (this can explain the powerful allure of neoliberal ideas notwithstanding the fact that repeated financial and economic crises have severely undermined trust in market mechanisms). Neoliberals have a specific conception of what constitutes a good life, and it is this conception that appeals to so many people. However, neoliberal ethics, in fact, contradict some of the most important tenets of both neoliberalism’s explanatory beliefs on reality as well as their more specific beliefs regarding the market. In the following, I will present the neoliberal view of the good life and, at the same time, call attention to the abovementioned contradictions.

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TWO VERSIONS OF NEOLIBERAL ETHICS There are two versions of neoliberal ethics, which, however, share the same beliefs and values.8 Both hold that the market represents the best way not only to allocate goods or services but also to maximally realize individual freedom. Both understand freedom in a purely formal sense, namely, as the absence of violent coercion by other individuals. Both consider this type of freedom to be the supreme value to be realized and defended against alternative values and especially against state interference. Both claim that individuals are solely responsible for their socioeconomic condition and are unable to blame society or the market for it. Consequently, they both define the good life as a life in which individuals are free from coercion by others, are able to interact freely with others through the market or market-like mechanisms, and take responsibility for the outcomes of their actions, including their failures. A more sophisticated version of neoliberal ethics is defended by authors like Hayek and Becker,9 who claim that being a person is defined by being able to develop a life plan and act according to it. All individuals have this capacity, and every action they undertake is the result of their free choice insofar as no coercion is exerted on them by others. These authors understand coercion as a threat of physical violence made by individuals who intend to harm the actors or persons and things they value (institutions or external circumstances do not exert coercion, as Hayek explains, recurring to the example of a rock climber on a steep slope).10 Conversely, freedom is to be understood merely as the absence of coercion as defined above. Hayek gives the following example: “Even if the threat of starvation to me and perhaps to my family impels me to accept a distasteful job at a very low wage, even if I am ‘at the mercy’ of the only man willing to employ me, I am not coerced by him or everybody else” so long as this man has no direct intention of harming me.11 In other words, I am free to decide whether I prefer to starve rather than accept an exploitative job offer—no coercion exists where there is an offer and no threat. The line between these alternatives, however, can be very thin—often akin to the infamous “offer you can’t refuse” scene in the movie The Godfather. In Hayek’s view, most actions are free and so are the individuals undertaking them. Moreover, it is a mistake to interpret the fact that others may represent a hindrance in the pursuit of one’s ends as coercion.12 If a competitor beats me in the market, or anticipates me in buying something I desired, or in marrying the woman I loved, he is not coercing me just because he has foiled my plans. It is therefore necessary, according to Hayek, to make people understand that not every kind of harm they suffer is to be considered as a wrong that has been done to them. Consequently, they have no reason to

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blame external circumstances or society at large for their failures or for what they wrongly perceive as the result of an injustice done to them. If they lose their job, for example, this is the consequence of labor market mechanisms, not of their employer’s intent to harm them. This is the first basic moral tenet of neoliberalism: everyone is to be considered fully autonomous in their actions, so long as no open, violent coercion has been exerted by others. A second belief integral to neoliberalism is the assumption that individuals mostly obey economic rationality. If to be human means the capacity to conceive of and enact a life plan, then it also means, first, developing interests and goals and, second, aiming to obtain the means that allow pursuing them. Every goal can be reduced to the logic of classical economics, according to which one tends to minimize one’s efforts and maximize one’s results. Individuals have limited resources at their disposal—be it time, money, strength, patience, attention, etc., and must calculate how much of these resources they want to invest in pursuing a specific goal.13 For this reason, individuals might be led to choose alternative goals or alternative means by receiving adequate positive or negative incentives. This is the second basic tenet of neoliberalism: individuals react to incentives; they are not only responsible but also responsive subjects, a fact also stressed by economic psychologists and social scientists.14 These two core beliefs of neoliberalism result in a specific ethical view of what constitutes a good life, namely a life in which individuals are free from coercion and act according to their life plan with no external coercion by others. Their action is guided by economic rationality which allows them to choose goals that offer the strongest positive incentives and avoid other goals because of the negative incentives associated with them. Furthermore, in pursuing their goals, they choose the means that represent the least cost in terms of available resources. A good life is, therefore, one in which they are able to choose among a wide range of appealing goals and corresponding means. The greater number of options, the freer the individual. A free and competitive market represents the perfect environment for this ideal, but can only be achieved by removing all obstacles that might limit the individual’s choice. This refers not only to the market of goods and services. Every action can be judged from the perspective of economic rationality in terms of its costs and expected gains; everything can be translated into the language and logic of the market. This is the position held by Gary Becker and Richard Posner in their book Uncommon Sense: Economic Insights from Marriage to Terrorism. According to these authors, there is or there should be a market for everything: for wives and husbands, for organs and drugs, for education, for security, and so on. In the perfect neoliberal world, everyone and everything has a price, and everyone and everything is subject to the law of supply and demand, with no false moral restrictions.15

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The cruder version of neoliberal ethics is based on a very simple principle: the claim that everyone is fully responsible for their lives and socioeconomic situation. This principle, because of its simplicity, is easily understood and can offer an apparently reasonable foundation for policies aiming at dismantling the welfare state. For this reason, this basic version of neoliberal ethics is more likely to be present in the discourse of politicians and pundits than more sophisticated versions. From this principle is derived an important corollary: the state has no moral right to take taxpayers’ money (i.e., money earned by “responsible” people through their hard work) and redistribute it to people who prefer to live on benefits rather than working. As regards the state’s protection of its citizens, everyone should be free to decide whether they want to pursue insurance policies against possible risks like unemployment, sickness, and natural disasters, without being forced to pay the state for a service they might not be interested in or they might even reject. Above all taxpayers should not have to contribute to state benefits apportioned to people who are unemployed.16 This extremely crude version of the two central moral tenets of neoliberalism has been defended by pundits, by authors of management and self-improvement handbooks, but also, surprisingly, in academic texts.17 According to this crude version of neoliberal ethics, those who have achieved economic independence should attribute this success to their own hard work and merit, and, conversely, can blame the poor or unemployed for their bad situation. Consequently, they should no longer accept that their money, earned through hard work, be used to compensate for the laziness, incompetence, or weakness of character of other people. This should not be reduced to a simple matter of lack of solidarity; we face rather a specific system of values, according to the definition of neoliberalism as a systemic doctrine. In this system, there is space for solidarity only toward people who face a disadvantage without being responsible for it (e.g., the victims of natural catastrophes or of accidents they did not provoke). Importantly, this is not only a “right-wing” or conservative system of values, as it has also been adopted by thinkers who define themselves as “leftists” or luck egalitarians.18 Adopting the neoliberal systemic doctrine and its central tenets leads to an epistemic bias that simply does not allow perceiving certain phenomena as an expression of social injustice. This fact, however, does not necessarily have to do with ideological rationalization or with the alleged cynicism of the upper classes, as I will develop in the next section.19

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THE CONSEQUENCES OF NEOLIBERAL ETHICS Neoliberal ethics allows individuals to develop a false sense of independence from society. Since there is a market for everything, there is also a market for lifestyles, in which everyone can choose the kind of life they want to lead according to, or even beyond their own economic possibilities—living in debt has become a perfectly legitimate condition in advanced societies.20 Individuals are encouraged to feel free to buy themselves a lifestyle in form of housing, clothing, gadgets, leisure, etc. More importantly, they can even buy themselves their rights—if one’s country does not grant certain rights, one can always opt to move abroad to obtain them. Gay couples can migrate to more liberal countries to marry; pregnant women to have an abortion; sterile couples to get children through surrogate mothers. Wealthy people from developing countries can move to safer and richer countries to live in security and luxury; entrepreneurs can move to tax havens; people from economically underdeveloped or developing countries can migrate to developed countries for a better chance in life. There are no limits to these demands for rights and lifestyles, since individual choices, like customers’ preferences, cannot be questioned.21 This phenomenon is also easily observable at the national level: individuals increasingly see their life plans in terms of inalienable rights and recur to the judiciary when they feel these have been violated. These legal challenges are often mounted even for seemingly trivial reasons, such as traffic tickets or failing to pass a school exam. In this way, rights are weaponized to keep society at bay. Society, as well as other individuals, are seen as hindrances to individual freedom and as potential threats to private decisions. The latter concept is particularly relevant for neoliberal ethics, as highlighted by Hayek. In one of his many attempts to explain coercion, he defines it as “the control of the essential data of an individual’s action by another” (this seems to be a wider definition than the one centered on the use of force) and claims that “it can be prevented only by enabling the individual to secure for himself some private sphere where he is protected against such interference.”22 Nota bene: it is the individual who secures for himself his private sphere, and thus decides what it includes; otherwise, he would suffer the coercion of others deciding for him. This is a traditional liberal argument, of course, and, as a good liberal, Hayek starts building the private sphere from the cornerstone of private property, as we must have “exclusive control of some material objects” in order to “carry out a coherent plan of action.”23 In modern society, we need not control all material objects that may serve our ends: it is, however, important that we have access to them, such as by being able to buy food rather than resort to subsistence farming or hunting in the wild. As long as there are enough people selling what I need to pursue my

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ends, I am free—even if I don’t have money to buy anything. The second step for securing a private sphere is connected to the first: in order to use other people’s property for my own ends, I must be able to establish contracts with them, and these contracts must be enforceable. Even here, Hayek does not mention the state, although it is improbable that individuals may enforce their rights by themselves, as acknowledged by Locke. The third step in securing the private sphere is guaranteeing the right to privacy and secrecy (“a man’s house is his castle”).24 What is essential in this view of the private sphere is, ultimately, that property be “sufficiently dispersed so that the individual is not dependent on particular persons who alone can provide him with what he needs.”25 Here. Hayek echoes Simmel’s claim that the impersonality of economic relations represents an increase in personal freedom, as we do not depend on the benevolence or friendship of others to obtain the means for pursuing our ends. Independence means we mustn’t have to rely exclusively on personal ties with others to reach our goals. In our society, this independence is gained first and foremost through money: hence the importance of having a reliable source of income either through work or through financial investment and passive income.26 The neoliberal view of individual freedom and rights leads, according to some authors (e.g., Axel Honneth),27 to social pathologies. From this perspective, we are facing social suffering on two levels. On a first level, society itself suffers under the attitudes of its members: social integration is at risk when a critical mass of individuals no longer believes in society, so they no longer conceive of themselves as social beings who are necessarily embedded in a precious, fragile network of social relations. In this case, suffering is social because it is the suffering of society. On a second level, phenomena of increasing individualism and isolation from society cause forms of suffering among the very individuals who (more or less intentionally) adopt these attitudes. In this case, suffering becomes social because its roots have spread into the very fabric of society through the attitudes of individuals who have adopted the neoliberal systemic doctrine. We should reject this doctrine not only because it fosters individualism and, in the end, antisocial attitudes—although this would be reason enough to do so. It should also be rejected because of its theoretical limits and internal contradictions, which cause forms of social suffering that are less easily detectable than the blatant individualism inherent to neoliberal systems.

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THE THEORETICAL LIMITS AND INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS OF NEOLIBERAL ETHICS The theoretical limits of this ethical doctrine (in both versions) are quite evident: First, it relies on an extremely simplified view of the individual, in which the social dimension is almost completely absent. Individuals are seen as coming into being furnished with a complete set of goals, wishes, and preferences, no matter how and under what circumstances they arrived at them (whether they were inculcated in them by family, community, society, etc.). As long as no coercion is exerted on them by others, individuals are considered free. This restricted definition of freedom leaves no space for other forms of constraints (e.g., religious, cultural, social, and economic constraints), even if individuals are threatened with some form of punishment in the case of noncompliance (e.g., excommunication, exclusion from the community, ostracism, poverty, etc.). In the neoliberal social ontology, the only actors are individuals; therefore, it makes no sense to talk of the coercion exerted by groups, cultures, structures, and social institutions (as distinguished from their individual representatives). This is a decisive blind spot that not only hinders the neoliberal systemic doctrine from fully grasping social reality, but also consequently affects its ethical views. By assuming this overly restrictive definition of freedom, neoliberal ethics reaches counterintuitive conclusions like those defended by Hayek in his example of the “freedom to starve.” His is not even the traditional negative definition of freedom as freedom from interference, as he reduces interference to mere coercion—defined, in a very restrictive way, as the combination of a direct intention to harm and a direct threat of physical violence. Starting from this definition of coercion, any kind of social or economic constraint ceases to represent a threat to individual freedom and becomes simply a hindrance one must take into account as a given or natural fact (Hayek explicitly puts such hindrances on par with natural phenomena or health issues). Market forces are akin to natural forces, like hurricanes and earthquakes: nobody is to blame for the harm they produce. Of course, we can draw vastly different conclusions, if we conceive of freedom as a process rather than as something one either has or does not have. In this more dynamic vision, one is more or less free according to a number of circumstances (not reduced to a single criterion like external coercion). Furthermore, it is not clear why one should give preference to freedom as absence of coercion over a wider concept. Why connect coercion to an explicit intention to harm through violence? Why should a wider concept of coercion (and therefore a different concept of freedom) be morally questionable? Hayek does not offer any reason as to why only his concepts of freedom

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and coercion should be considered to be morally relevant. Even if they were the only theoretically correct definitions, this would not justify considering only freedom and coercion when pondering morally acceptable actions and not—say—the satisfaction of needs, or other, more indirect forms of violence or of influence on one’s life circumstances. Why should we be preoccupied exclusively with the absence of coercion rather than with the absence of want? This dogma of freedom from coercion as the supreme value leads to the rejection of any public policy that can be interpreted as an unjustified form of coercion, including taxation, seen as legitimate only insofar as it is needed to maintain a legal order that protects the individual’s freedom from the violence of others and guarantees the functioning of the market mechanisms that should regulate every human interaction.28 As a consequence, the use of tax money to fund social policies, particularly those aimed to assist the poor or even to provide universal healthcare, is deemed unacceptable. Furthermore, the reduction of the individual to homo oeconomicus, beyond representing another oversimplification, leads to other questionable consequences. According to the second insight of neoliberal ethics, individuals can be led to choose specific goals or means through incentives as long as these incentives are not connected with a direct intention to harm and a direct threat of violence. Individuals, however, are considered free, despite their being manipulated or nudged into taking specific courses of action.29 In other words, one may treat individuals according to one’s will, as long as one does not coerce them: one can recur to suggestion, manipulation, and emotional blackmail—precisely the methods of most marketing strategies—or to social pressure, which, implausibly, for Hayek does not constitute “a serious infringement of individual liberty.”30 Nevertheless, neoliberal ethics holds a strong motivational appeal for many individuals, for various reasons. First, it allows individuals to feel that they have full control over their lives and actions, and convinces them that they will attain their goals as long as they are not hindered by others through coercion. Moreover, it helps them build a narrative that avoids considering complex and inscrutable aspects of the human experience, such as the role of family, culture, and society in shaping their personality, moral values, goals, preferences, desires, etc. This reflects a general tendency to seek simple answers to complex questions, as can be identified both in everyday discourse, as well as in the increasing appeal of conspiracy theories providing a monocausal explanation of complex phenomena.31 The same goes for the reduction of any problem we face in life to a matter of economic rationality, as this allows for a simple explanation of human behavior and a neat interpretation of otherwise opaque motivational structures. From this point of view,

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the neoliberal systemic doctrine is found wanting regarding its explanatory beliefs on reality. This is particularly evident if one considers the vision of society on which these beliefs are grounded. In chapter 8 of The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek characterizes the history of modern Western societies as the passage from a society in which “a relatively larger part of the people” were “independent in the activities that gave them their livelihood” to a society in which “most of us work as employed members of large organizations,” be it companies or governmental agencies. The main issue with regard to this passage is the fact that the ideals and principles defended by Hayek in the first chapters of the book (freedom, responsibility, etc.) are—according to him—relics of previous societies that are no longer widely accepted.32 This would seem to raise the question of whether it makes sense to hold on to these ideals and values. Hayek, however, neglects to entertain the idea that society is capable of developing different ideals and values better adapted to the present situation. It is here that the axiological and moral conservatism of Hayek and, ultimately, of neoliberals generally, appears in utmost clarity. They seek to impose values developed in a different social and economic context on contemporary society and, in doing so, they prove that they consider those values to have an absolute validity that goes beyond time and space. The historicity of their narrow conceptions of freedom or explanations of the market is not even considered. The attempt to impose the values of an older society on a newer, different one faces obvious and unavoidable difficulties even when it succeeds in the widespread adoption of these values (as neoliberalism historically did), and cannot but provoke suffering. If the vast majority of people are not economically independent, as was the case in the society that produced the ideas and values cherished by Hayek and his neoliberal followers, it is difficult to imagine how this suffering will disappear. The solution offered by neoliberal thinkers and politicians has been to reform the labor market and labor laws in order to transform the relationship between employers and employees, attempting to convince subjects that they are free entrepreneurs of the self. The result, however, has scarcely been that of making autonomous entrepreneurs out of wage-earning workers. On the contrary, these reforms have led to precarious forms of labor defined by uncertainty and instability, that do not provide workers the feeling of freedom they were expected to develop.33 After having been told that they are autonomous entrepreneurs whose economic success depends exclusively on their own ability and drive, people not only realize how little this corresponds with reality; despite Hayek, they also experience the constraints put on them by the labor market as coercion, as they see no alternative to their precarious, falsely autonomous work. Even when they manage to be economically

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independent in the traditional sense, as small shop owners, craftsmen, organic farmers, etc., they still face competition from massive corporations able not only to shape the market but also to influence the legislation in their favor. In a society characterized by the dominance of large companies (what Hayek calls “large organizations”), the vast majority of individuals can no longer be economically independent as Hayek would have it. It seems, however, that Hayek is uninterested in the discrepancy between the ideals and values he defends and the reality of our society. Rather, he is worried about the lack of specific character traits among employees. They “regard as unnecessary many exercises of freedom which are essential to the independent” and they “hold views of deserts and appropriate remuneration entirely different from his.” More generally, freedom is threatened because of the “tendency of the employed majority to impose upon the rest their standards and views of life.”34 Evidently, for Hayek, it would be more desirable if the minority of employers and independent workers would impose their standards and vision of life upon the majority of employees (precisely what neoliberal governance aims to do), as he and the neoliberal systemic doctrine prioritize freedom of enterprise above other values such as freedom from want or democratic decision making. Furthermore, “a man who works under direction for a fixed salary or wage . . . can hardly be as inventive or as experimental” as an independent worker, for “he cannot go beyond his allotted task even when he is capable of doing more”35—an interesting remark, given its parallels with Marx’s theory of alienation.36 Lack of initiative and inventiveness has a further consequence: wage earners have “little knowledge of the responsibilities of those who control resources,” such as those of their employers.37 Here Hayek seems to refer to the antiquated idea of employers as individuals who make decisions taking into account their social responsibility and act like fathers for their workers. This ideal figure, of course, has scarcely ever existed, and it is certainly at odds with contemporary capitalism, in which large companies are owned by a plurality of shareholders, whose only interest lies in their dividends rather than in society’s or employees’ well-being, and which are directed by managers whose only responsibility is to shareholders and not society. Furthermore, Hayek focuses on the individual’s initiative and inventiveness, but devotes much less attention to the external conditions necessary for economic success. The latter seems to depend on individual initiative, even in the case of large companies (“the outstanding success even of large and well-established corporations is often due to some single person who has achieved his position of independence and influence through the control of large means”),38 or on factors such as demand and supply. Hayek does not seem to think that the state can contribute to creating the conditions under which individual enterprises can succeed—e.g., by facilitating credit, offering

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tax exemptions, creating infrastructures that no individual initiative could afford to provide, or even by opening new markets through military conquest, as occurred during the imperialistic phase of nineteenth-century capitalism. Individuals, though, realize quite well that their chances of success do in fact depend very much on external circumstances, and as such demand that governments take the steps they consider necessary to the pursuit of their own goals and personal interests. Examples of these demands are varied, and could include, for example, the establishment or suspension of state subsidies; investment in infrastructure; implementation of protectionist measures or the complete liberalization of the market. If citizens’ demands are not met, they are liable to feel that the state has wronged them, even if no action was taken, no threat was made, and no violence was exerted. Finally, Hayek defends that the market creates a catallaxy, that is, a spontaneous order superior to the artificial “order,” created by the state when it surpasses the limits of a vigilant-state.39 Following Michael Oakeshott, Hayek insists that the only task of the state is to guarantee the rule of law, leaving it to the market to allocate wealth and social strata.40 This catallaxy comes with a price, however. Since the market is made up of innumerable transactions among individuals, each in accordance with their own interests, it is impossible to obtain a general view of what is really happening. No total knowledge of the market can ever be achieved, for which reason, any attempt at state control of the market is destined to fail. On the flip side, individuals are supposed to act on the basis of their knowledge of the market’s rules and mechanisms, and are told that their success or failure depends on this knowledge. However, no matter how well-prepared they might be, they may fail, because of the market’s unpredictability. For Hayek, the market is neither just nor unjust, since it is a neutral mechanism with no intention—a natural force among others. In this view, claiming that the market is unjust is just as nonsensical as claiming that gravity is unjust.41 The implicit consequence of this (a consequence that Hayek neglects to draw) is that acting on the market is akin to gambling. To take a less pessimistic view, this means that luck may help those who do not have enough experience and knowledge of the market, in this way providing a chance for everyone to succeed. This, however, goes against the idea that individuals are ultimately responsible for their socioeconomic condition, and thus undermines the very basis of neoliberal ethics. Furthermore, it explains why so many strict adherents of neoliberal ethics might feel deceived upon realizing the futility of their efforts at success in the markets (in any of the many markets that, according to neoliberals, exist across all realms of life). This discrepancy between the promises of neoliberal ethics and the actual functioning of the markets (as implicitly acknowledged at least by Hayek, if not by other neoliberal authors) is an important source of social suffering.

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Neoliberalism, as a systemic doctrine, struggles with this. On the one hand, the market is presented as the most reliable, rational way of organizing the satisfaction of needs and the provision of goods and services, as well as the only source of individual freedom and well-being. On the other hand, individuals are urged to accept their failures in the market as quasi-natural events that do not depend on anyone’s intention and cannot, therefore, be deemed unjust, even though they experience them precisely so. These frustrated individuals did all they were told: they got professional training, went to business school, followed the advice of experts. And yet, they failed. When they seek an explanation, the answer is that the market is neither just nor unjust, but simply too complex for its results to be predictable. They are told to try harder the next time. They know, however, that there will be no guarantee that trying harder will lead to success, precisely because of the unpredictability of the market. These individuals are confused, but see no alternative because it has been drilled into their psyche that “there is no alternative.” Their belief in the benign force of the market has become religious faith that defies all counterevidence and reality checks. The discrepancy between belief and reality, promises and results, the claims and demands of neoliberal doctrine, and the sense of impotence experienced in the face of the complexity and unpredictability of the market give rise to psychological suffering, depression, burnout, and a general sense of inadequacy, as many authors have described.42 In this case, this suffering is not imposed on recalcitrant individuals who reject the doctrine (e.g., on temporary workers who resent the precariousness of their jobs). Rather, it is a result of its victims embracing the doctrine. For this reason, they are not capable of identifying the neoliberal systemic doctrine itself as the cause of their suffering. On the contrary, the neoliberal systemic doctrine leads them to search for this cause in their own behavior or psyche. What is, in fact, a form of social suffering is interpreted as purely individual suffering—as evidence that there is something innately wrong with them as an individual. The suffering is thereby amplified while, at the same time, its true roots are concealed. Suffering becomes second-order suffering,43 which, by obscuring the causes of first-order suffering (the visible symptoms of malaise: depression, burnout, etc.), makes it impossible to treat them. The discrepancy between the neoliberal beliefs and values adopted by supporters of neoliberalism and their individual experience of failure is rationalized by adopting a narrative that posits their alleged inadequacy as the reason for the failure to live up to the neoliberal ideal of the good life. They are supposed to assume full responsibility for their choices, economic success or failure, and the social position they have achieved; on the other hand, they do not feel that they really had the freedom to act that they had in theory. While they followed the rules, and no open coercion was exerted

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by other individuals, they feel that their actions were not completely free and that external circumstances made it difficult or impossible to realize their life plan. According to Hayek, they are like the climber who ended up in a risky position because of his free choices. According to their personal experience, however, they were pushed into that position against their will, even though apparently nobody directly forced them there. This second-order suffering might, however, lead people to adopt a different narrative: they may develop a feeling of resentment that forces them to look for a scapegoat: someone they can blame for their plight and come to despise or even hate. Arlie Hochschild’s study on Trump voters shows how many of them developed a narrative explaining their situation of socioeconomic marginalization, long-term unemployment, educational underachievement, etc., that would allow them not to blame themselves, society, or its sacred economic system, having interiorized the neoliberal doctrine. Instead, they blame certain social groups, like Afro-Americans, LGBTQ+ people, ethnic minorities, and even women, which, according to their narrative, have robbed them of their legitimate expectations of social and financial advancement by receiving underserved help from the government (especially from Democrat-led governments).44 Their resentment, and the consequent manifestations of homophobia, xenophobia, and racial and gender hatred can be considered symptoms of second-order suffering caused by their embrace of the neoliberal systemic doctrine predominant in American society. Their narrative, although at odds with the orthodoxy of such a doctrine (which would hold them responsible for their condition), represents a strategy for avoiding self-blame and the corresponding forms of suffering (lack of self-respect and self-esteem, psychological malaise, etc.). At the same time, it represents the implicit acknowledgment that there are aspects of their lives that escape their control. To be sure, the persons interviewed by Hochschild are wrong in identifying minority groups as the real obstacle to the realization of their life plan (their version of the American dream), rather than blaming the way power, wealth, income, and social positions are distributed within American society. This, however, would imply abandoning the neoliberal doctrine and embracing a different one—one they are unable to find at present. The lack of an alternative narrative leads them to maintain that which they have interiorized. FINAL REMARKS We have described how neoliberalism, as a systemic doctrine, can offer an appealing system of beliefs and values to those who embrace it. In particular, its ethical view of what constitutes a good life might seem reasonable and worthy of pursuing: it insists on individual freedom (as opposed to external

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control, primarily, by society and the state) and on personal responsibility; it allows successful individuals to claim sole responsibility for their success while rejecting any debt of gratitude toward society at large; it presents them with a vision of a free, competitive market in which they can enrich themselves and fulfill all their desires, provided they earn enough money. The adoption of this doctrine by a majority of voters led many countries to establish neoliberal governments and implement reforms such as privatization of public services, reduction in labor rights, deregulation in the financial sector, etc., causing widespread social suffering. There is, however, another form of suffering whose roots lie precisely in the embrace of the neoliberal systemic doctrine as well as in the dissonance resulting from the gap between its main tenets, on the one hand, and personal experiences of failure and disappointment, on the other. This second-order suffering can lead to two different narratives: one in which the individual blames themselves for their shortcomings, resulting in a lack of self-esteem and psychological malaise; and one that produces resentment and hostility toward social groups blamed for one’s own failures. These narratives can deepen the first-order suffering of individuals by concealing its cause. It can also, however, lead individuals to question their own beliefs and values, namely the neoliberal doctrine they have embraced. Whether this more critical outcome able to catalyze political change will come to fruition is something that only time will tell. NOTES 1. For a short overview see Alessandro Pinzani, “Farewell to Welfare. An End to Citizenship as We Know It.” SocietàMutamentoPolítica, 7, no. 13 (2016): 119–37, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.13128​/SMP​-18286. 2. An exception is a short article published in Swedish, in which Milton Friedman uses the term. See Milton Friedman, “Nyliberalismen og dens muligheter [Neo-liberalism and its Prospects],” Farmand, February 17, 1951: 89–93. On the non-use of the term by neoliberal authors see Taylor C. Boas and Jordan Gans-Morse, “Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan,” Studies in Comparative International Development, 44 (2009), 137–61, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1007​ /s12116​-009​-9040​-5. On the debate on liberalism see Dieter Phlewe, “Introduction,” in: The Road from Mount Pèlerin, ed. Philip Mirowski and Dieter Phlewe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 10–15. 3. Phlewe, “Introduction,” 4 et passim. 4. See, e.g., Perry Anderson, “Renewals,” New Left Review, 1 (2000), 5–25; Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 56 et passim; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 64–86; Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, The New Way of the World:

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On Neoliberal Society (London: Verso, 2013), 255–99; Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos (New York: Zone Books, 2015), 115–50. 5. I have discussed this concept in Alessandro Pinzani, “Critique of Forms of Life or Critique of Pervasive Doctrines?” Critical Horizons, 27, no. 2 (2019): 140–49, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1080​/14409917​.2019​.1676946, in “Migration and Social Suffering,” in: Challenging the Borders of Justice in the Age of Migrations, ed. Juan Carlos Velasco and Maria C. La Barbera (Cham: Springer, 2019), 139–56, https:​//​doi​.org​ /10​.1007​/978​-3​-030​-05590​-5​_8, and in “Systemic Suffering as a Critical Tool.” Dois Pontos, 19, no. 1 (2022). 6. Phlewe, “Introduction,” 14. 7. Raymond Plant, The Neoliberal State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 8. In the following I address and elaborate on themes I have discussed in Alessandro Pinzani, “Uma vida boa é uma vida responsável: o neoliberalismo como doutrina ética,” in: Experiência formativa e reflexão, ed. R. Rajobac, L. C. Carlos Bombassaro and P. Goergen (Caxias do Sul: Educs, 2016), 369–82. 9. See, for instance, Friedrich von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty. The Definitive Edition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011), 57–72, 134–65 and 184–96; Gary Becker, Human Capital, 3rd edition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993), 15–94. 10. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 60. 11. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 204. 12. On this view of coercion as distinct from other forms of hindrance see Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 199–205. 13. This is true of every aspect of human life, including love or sex, as defended in Richard Posner, Sex and Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 111–45 et passim. 14. For a popular formulation of this view see Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. 15. Gary Becker and Richard Posner, Uncommon Sense. Economic Insights, from Marriage to Terrorism. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009. Against this view see Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. 16. The latter position was defended also by Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 405–29. 17. See, for instance, Charles Murray, Losing Ground, New York: Basic Books, 1984 and David Kelley, A Life of One’s Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State, Washington DC: Cato Institute, 1998. In these paragraphs, I elaborate on Alessandro Pinzani, “Farewell to Welfare.” 18. E.g., Ronald Dworkin, “Equality, Luck and Hierarchy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 31 (2003): 190–98 and Richard Arneson, “Luck Egalitarianism Interpreted and Defended,” Philosophical Topics, 32, no. 1 & 2 (2004): 1–20, http:​//​dx​.doi​.org​ /10​.5840​/philtopics2004321​/217. 19. Cf. Vladimir Safatle, Cinismo e falência da crítica (São Paulo: Boitempo, 2008).

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20. See Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man, Amsterdam: semiotext(e), 2012. 21. The perverse consequence of this reasoning is that it leads to conflating real rights (like the rights of pregnant women to have an abortion or of gay couples to marry) with mere preferences and whims (sometimes even with morally questionable ones, such as the desire to avoid paying taxes or to avoid people of lower social condition). If everything has a price, nothing has any value other than economic value. The claims of women or gay people who have been discriminated against are put on par with those of rich people attempting to isolate themselves from their society, as it is only a matter of how much you can pay to satisfy your demands. This vision blurs a relevant distinction: women demanding the right to have an abortion, gays demanding the right to marry, or refugees demanding the right to asylum are not fighting for their individual lifestyle, as the neoliberal vulgate would have us believe: they are rather engaged in a political struggle for full citizenship. They are not trying to insulate themselves from society but are demanding their full integration into it. 22. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 206. 23. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 207. 24. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 209. 25. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 208. 26. Georg Simmel, Philosophy of Money (London: Routledge, 2011), 308–14. 27. Axel Honneth, Freedom’s Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 86–94. 28. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 430–53. 29. Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge. 30. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 214. 31. Michael Butter, “Nichts ist, wie es scheint.” Über Verschwörungstheorien, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2018. 32. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 184. 33. See Guy Standing, The Precariat, London: Bloomsbury, 2011, and Isabel Lorey, State of Insecurity. Government of the Precarious, London: Verso, 2015. 34. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 186. 35. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 187 f. 36. Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,” in: Collected Works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), vol. III, 270–82. 37. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 188. 38. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 190. 39. Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty (London: Routledge, 1982), vol. II, 107–32. 40. Michael Oakeshott, Lectures in the History of Political Thought (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006), 472–88; Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, vol. II, 31–61. 41. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, vol. II, 114–28. 42. Alain Ehrenberg, Le culte de la performance, Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1994 and The Weariness of the Self, Montreal: McGill University Press, 2010; Christophe

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Dejours, Souffrance en France, Paris: Seuil, 2009; Marc-Henry Soulet (éd.), La Souffrance social, Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2009; Maria Rita Kehl, O tempo e o cão. A atualidade das depressões, São Paulo: Boitempo, 2009; Christian Dunker, Mal-estar, sofrimento e sintoma, São Paulo: Boitempo, 2015. 43. I adopt this terminology to refer to those deeper phenomena, following what Christopher Zurn has termed second-order disorders. See Christopher Zurn. “Social Pathologies as Second-Order Disorders,” in: Axel Honneth: Critical Essays, ed. Danielle Petherbridge (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 345–70. 44. Arlie R. Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land (New York: The New Press, 2016), 135–40.

REFERENCES Anderson, Perry. “Renewals.” New Left Review, 1 (2000), 5–25. Arneson, Richard. “Luck Egalitarianism Interpreted and Defended.” Philosophical Topics, 32, no. 1 & 2 (2004): 1–20. Becker, Gary. Human Capital, 3rd edition. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993. Becker, Gary, and Richard Posner. Uncommon Sense. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009. Boas, Taylor C., and Jordan Gans-Morse. “Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan.” Studies in Comparative International Development, 44 (2009), 137–61, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s12116​-009​-9040​-5. Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos. New York: Zone Books, 2015. Butter, Michael. “Nichts ist, wie es scheint.” Über Verschwörungstheorien. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2018. Dardot, Pierre, and Christian Laval: The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society. London: Verso, 2013. Dejours, Christophe. Souffrance en France. Paris: Seuil, 2009. Dunker, Christian. Mal-estar, sofrimento e sintoma. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2015. Dworkin, Ronald. “Equality, Luck and Hierarchy.” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 31 (2003): 190–98. Ehrenberg, Alain. Le culte de la performance. Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1994. ———. The Weariness of the Self. Montreal: McGill University Press, 2010. Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Friedman, Milton. “Nyliberalismen og dens muligheter [Neo-liberalism and its Prospects].” Farmand, February 17, 1951: 89–93. Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Hayek, Friedrich von. Law, Legislation, and Liberty. London: Routledge, 1982. ———. The Constitution of Liberty. The Definitive Edition. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011. Hochschild, Arlie R. Strangers in Their Own Land. New York: The New Press, 2016. Honneth, Axel. Freedom’s Right. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

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Kehl, Maria Rita. O tempo e o cão. A atualidade das depressões. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2009. Kelley, David. A Life of One’s Own. Washington DC: Cato Institute, 1998. Lazzarato, Maurizio. The Making of the Indebted Man. Amsterdam: semiotext(e), 2012. Lorey, Isabel. State of Insecurity. London: Verso, 2015. Marx, Karl. “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.” In: Collected Works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, vol. III, 229–325, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010. Murray, Charles. Losing Ground. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Oakeshott, Michael. Lectures in the History of Political Thought. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006. Phlewe, Dieter. “Introduction.” In: The Road from Mount Pèlerin, edited by Philip Mirowski and Dieter Phlewe, 1–42. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Pinzani, Alessandro. “Farewell to Welfare. An End to Citizenship as We Know It.” SocietàMutamentoPolítica, 7, no. 13 (2016): 119–37, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.13128​/ SMP​-18286. ———. “Uma vida boa é uma vida responsável: o neoliberalismo como doutrina ética.” In: Experiência formativa e reflexão, edited by R. Rajobac, L. C. Carlos Bombassaro and P. Goergen, 369–82. Caxias do Sul: Educs, 2016. ———. “Critique of Forms of Life or Critique of Pervasive Doctrines?” Critical Horizons, 27, no. 2 (2019): 140–49, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1080​/14409917​.2019​ .1676946. ———. “Migration and Social Suffering.” In: Challenging the Borders of Justice in the Age of Migrations, edited by Juan Carlos Velasco and Maria C. La Barbera, 139–56. Cham: Springer, 2019, 139–56, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1007​/978​-3​-030​-05590​ -5​_8. Pinzani, Alessandro. “Systemic Suffering as a Critical Tool.” Dois Pontos, 19, no. 1 (2022). Plant, Raymond. The Neoliberal State. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Posner, Richard. Sex and Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Safatle, Vladimir. Cinismo e falência da crítica. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2008. Sandel, Michael J. What Money Can’t Buy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. Simmel, Georg. Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge, 2011. Soulet, Marc-Henry (éd.). La Souffrance social. Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2009. Standing, Guy. The Precariat. London: Bloomsbury, 2011. Thaler, Richard H., and Cass Sunstein. Nudge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Zurn, Christopher. “Social Pathologies as Second-Order Disorders.” In: Axel Honneth: Critical Essays, edited by Danielle Petherbridge. Leiden: Brill, 2011) 345–70.

Chapter 2

The Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism Housing Financialization, Transformations of Work, and Institutional Challenges in Today’s Spain1 Nuria Sánchez Madrid

In recent decades, critical theory has largely discussed whether neoliberalism should be viewed as a set of biopolitical devices that radically alter the social experience and beliefs of subjects on a global scale, often punitively.2 This stage of capitalism has eroded the material and symbolic conditions necessary for livable life at a scale never before seen. From literal mass hunger, to frustrating and unfulfilling work under precarious labor conditions, to the phenomenon of “burnout,” the cultural hegemony of neoliberal subjectivation depletes human energy and skills for the sake of producing human beings able to deliver unbounded productivity. Neoliberal politics implemented in southern European countries such as Spain have proven that the expression “moral economy”3 not only implies subaltern forms of livelihood, but also fosters practices and beliefs legitimating inequality, thus bringing about a sort of anthropological turn. What, we might ask, does this anthropological turn hint at? It is blatantly obvious that the social dynamics resulting from the above-mentioned phenomena intensively jeopardize the access to common resources that Hegel himself placed at the center of human community. Jaeggi, a renowned a figure of the immanent critique of capitalism, highlighted the social value of work, encouraging us to open the black box of 23

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capitalism and reveal the dark social practices concealed under the alleged neutrality of economic dynamics. Her critical analysis draws from Hegel’s interpretation of civil society, who in §199 of Elements of the Philosophy of Right claimed that each subject should partake in the “universal and permanent resources” woven by human interdependence into a commonwealth necessary to live a valuable life.4 Taking this classical passage into account, Jaeggi affirms that the failures of work entail radical damage to social life. Moreover, a normative approach to work as a basic human reality allows her to affirm that the pathological character of work is to be determined in relation to the “achievements of the species,” or to what is necessary in order to be able to relate to the cooperative, ethical, work-mediated sphere.5

The ‘stealth revolution’6 triggered by neoliberal rationality has prompted a radical reversal of social values, transforming illness, vulnerability, and disability into phases of a grand tragedy in which human life takes on the role of a passive agent. Put differently, the anthropological turn fueled by neoliberalism relies on a full-fledged cultural strategy, fostering a fragmented community composed of unsatisfied and depressed people deprived of any means of perceiving their common structures of interdependence. In this hermeneutical context, Zurn’s suggestion to analyze “second-level disorders” as a helpful tool to identify social pathologies appears quite convincing. In fact, these kinds of social disorders are reflections of the obstacles that the subject socially reduced to homo oeconomicus must cope with in order to survive in an objectively hostile environment.7 In this paper I aim to apply an immanent critique of capitalism to the recent societal evolution in Spain, where the chains of economic debt have tightened and quickly spread throughout different spheres of life, while at the same time the notion of political agency has grown. This cultural revolution has resulted in a surge in right-wing political parties and think tanks promoting a notion of a state with no responsibility for the economic suffering of citizens or for the care for children, disabled and the elderly, while also excluding certain bodies based on race or religion. This account of the state as a mere observer of market logic and structures, intended to divide humans into the categories of “hardworking” or “lazy” (the latter generally associated with immigrant subjects) has become increasingly popular in the Community of Madrid since the 1990s, attaining its climax with the current leadership of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, a politician convinced of the social virtues of neoliberalism and intent on making them the common sense of this epoch.

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CRITICAL EMPATHY AGAINST NEOLIBERAL CULTURAL POLITICS The naturalization of homo oeconomicus has radically narrowed the meaning of life to be intimately tied to the concept of extraction, so that only those activities providing a financial return receive social value and recognition. Under this cultural doctrine, social bonds wither away in the face of financial demands and the pressure they exercise on the subject. Here, of course, the conceptual framework assigned to the state has been a key means for expanding neoliberal ideology. As a result of the reduction of the role of the state in the struggle against economic inequality, structural racism, and gender violence, the logic inherent to social pathologies becomes a mere matter of fact, invisible to any critical approach. Gambetti has explored the causes of the rise of neofascism in a global scale, pointing out that The inequalities that neoliberal governance produces are biologized and normalized within a scheme of merit-based competitiveness. The “loser” is the new “infrahuman.” This having been said, pointing fingers at the masses who desire authoritarianism will not do. We are all guilty, as far as our everyday practices are concerned, of reproducing some version of the neoliberal discourse that the weak are “worthless.”8

Gambetti’s account neatly depicts the anthropological embeddedness of neoliberal governance, which was assumed as a sign of progress by the conservative governments of Spain during the last third of the twentieth century. According to this mindset, reducing the public administration’s control over market transactions between allegedly equal social agents was a step toward a newer, more efficient governmental form. Sundry perverse effects, however, resulted from this conceptual shift. Namely, conservative and alt-right forces began to argue that an ambitious social agenda, aiming to protect basic social rights, would be a material waste and an economic strain on the “legitimate citizens” of the nation. Thus, the notion of social protection, touted by the current leftist Spanish government as a “social shield” during the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine, began to lose acceptance, thanks to the decades-long effort of right-wing populists to promote the idea that such a package of measures would only benefit lazy people undeserving of any public support paid by active and responsible citizens.9 Furthermore, while administrative structures necessary for a livable world were progressively disavowed by large sectors of civil society, new sources of economic dependence began to be artificially generated. Real estate firms, for instance, offered increasingly violent conditions to subjects seeking to access the housing market, as seen in the rise of mortgage rates and the dearth of available

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flats.10 Meanwhile, southern Europe’s population became the target of a systematic civil pedagogy praising neoliberal competition while condemning basic social rights. Contemporary forms of social suffering in southern European countries can be traced back to the widespread belief that social success or failure is the result of an individual’s ability to function within the economic market, which in turn justifies any sacrifice to attain this goal. The social embodiment of such a conceptual framework sets up a culture of damage that not only limits the practical horizons of the subject, but also necessitates the search for scapegoats upon which to pin the frustrations of a life based only on productivity and extractivism. In this context, it is unsurprising that regressive political forces successfully stoke enraged groups of citizens to openly harass immigrant workers, often viewed as subsidized subjects who do not contribute to the common wealth. As Jaeggi emphasized regarding the shortcomings underpinning the “economist” account of neoliberal patterns of development, neoliberalism exhibits its own notion of social and ethical normativity, as criticized by Horkheimer in the Nachtrag of Traditional and Critical Theory. Moreover, the “failed social practices” analyzed by Jaeggi in recent work elucidate the fallacy of considering the neoliberal market as allegedly devoid of determined values.11 Even if the capitalist order of market claims to be freed from all cultural context, it determines the inertial forces circulating in a market of extraction, production and consummation of commodities. In this vein, to open the “black box” of the neoliberal system, we must address the increasingly precarious frameworks of the labor market, as confirmed by the evolution of sequential legislative reforms from the Moncloa Deal (1977) to the Confederal Labor Agreement (1997). Taking into account the progressive enfeeblement of Spanish labor regulation since the advent of democracy, the examples of both the immaterial work and caregiving sectors help shed light on the intertwinement of subjectivity, democratic workplaces, and the materiality of labor in the making of civil commitment. Put slightly differently, the workplace may be a pedagogical space essential for acquainting subjects with the universal interdependence and vulnerability integral to the human struggle to create a livable life. It may also, however, be a space of frustration and civil disaffection, leading the subject to seek scapegoats for this disaffection and thus obsessing over the expulsion of immigrants. As scholars such as Ahmed12 have accurately described, those groups embodying the “other” are often considered “sickening” by those frustrated with their failure to achieve success within the neoliberal order, whose anguish, discomfort and frustration seemingly decrease as the alleged guilty party receive the punishment they “deserve.” Neoliberal biopolitics gave up on the promise of social advancement, opting rather to divide society between bodies deserving of state support and bodies to be expelled from the country. This cultural

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dismantlement of solidarity, however, invites us to focus on the social task of regenerating the societal bonds forged by the ancient virtue of empathy. Even as neoliberal culture worships competence and productivity as the highest social values, empathy continues to emerge as a civil demand, and one which has undergone complex and multiple cultural shifts. During the European Enlightenment, empathy could be considered a communitarian yearning of the modern autonomous subject, which philosophers such as Rousseau, Smith, de Grouchy, Hume, Kant described as a “woke emotion,” with critical potential as a socially transformative emotion. How though, can empathy be considered a critical social structure? As Kolers claims in his survey of solidarity: empathy “is not a symmetric relation; it is deferential,”13 because it requires feeling and thinking from the standpoint of others. Put slightly differently, a critical practice of empathy helps elucidate the epistemic privileges that usually fall on the subject who feels empathy. From this view, empathy appears as necessary for cultivating our “sense of justice,” or as Shklar puts it, “to take the victims view into full account and give her voice its full weight.”14 This optical shift also engages a perception of social normativity that revives the political responsibility of the subject in the struggle against different features of structural social injustices, among them labor precarity.15 By activating this practical horizon, this emotion abides with the duty to grasp the links between epistemic and social privileges to foster a better understanding of the production and reproduction of historical injustice. The critical tasks of empathy thus appear as a fruitful tool to counter the social bonds destroyed by cultural neoliberalism, especially as the public sphere prevents people from falling into a “doxic empathy” for rather endorsing a “critical empathy,”16 as both attitudes display disparate practical projects and goals. Moreover, the first one draws to a transient emotional relief with regard to situations whose genealogy the subject would not be able to grasp, while the second one fosters social emancipation of oppressive contexts which the observer is acquainted to through reflection and empirical knowledge. The experience of working with others may be useful in grasping the critical content of empathy. In fact, labor activities always rely on material and epistemic structures of interdependence that debunk the alleged equality of the positions occupied by different subjects in the liberal market. As scholars of psychopathologies of work such as Dejours have highlighted, social suffering at work is an expression of an oppressive social objectivity, allowing citizens to become increasingly awakened to the demands of a social normativity based on the increase of profit as the highest value. The workplace as a space of encounter with others interacting with us to provide goods and services may be a space for discovering previously undetected shortcomings and flaws of labor structures. In this way, the workplace might yield outcomes

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analogous to the results stemming from the “consciousness-raising meetings” researched by Fricker, in which the shared insight of “sexual harassment” of women fostered the second wave of feminism.17 As Fricker stresses in her discussion of these meetings, the group dynamic and interaction with others allowed women to verbalize a structural damage suffered by many women but not addressed in the public sphere. This account of empathy illuminates it as a transformative emotion,18 which, rather than analyzing the world from the mental framework of the observer, inserts the standpoint of subalternized collectives and knowledges in “our collective hermeneutical resource.”19 Which epistemology, however, would best enable critical empathy to spread throughout society? To answer this question we must pay attention to the “blind spots”20 which shape our social life and its dynamics. Neoliberal “common sense” attempts to convince us that each of us might claim to have a neat map of key questions of interest for our existence, obscuring the fact that epistemic cooperation could illuminate the strengths and frailties of our coexistence as well as our overlapping interests. Thus, opposite the spectrum from resentment, empathy reminds us that an effective resistance against neoliberal dogmas requires a social theory countering the epistemic centrality typical of the modern account of the subject as just a notional philosophical image. Put differently, empathy does not draw on a reflective function of an omniscient subject or observer, even if she were able to redistribute her discursive tools and sources. On the contrary, this emotion rather confirms the deference the subject ought to show toward subjects and groups historically devaluated in their testimonial and hermeneutic agency. In this sense, how might democratic workplaces contribute spreading this sense of empathy? In my view, labor and work exhibit the multiple levels of interdependence experienced daily by all humans both with other humans and with technological devices. For this reason, these spaces could become platforms for both uncovering the inequalities in the workplace, as well as for ideating new labor rights that the emotion of empathy helps us to conceive. In this way, empathy functions as a catalyst between social experience and political construction. In section 3, I will address precarious labor as a key factor in understanding the emotions underpinning the current crisis of political imagination, with a focus on Spain. THE CASE OF HOUSING FINANCIALIZATION: ITS IMPACT ON SOUTHERN EUROPE Real estate violence played a central role in the assumption of the neoliberal anthropological turn in southern Europe and the global South,21 yielding similar effects in societies with different levels of development. It may be

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affirmed that housing financialization acts as a sort of homogenizing veil that has long obscured heterogeneous social patterns. The deep transformation that the construction sector underwent in recent decades22 has spread the logic of rent into the sphere of commodification and consumption of housing.23 In a recent paper, Orta Mascaró24 inspected how the urban development of the Community of Madrid, long governed by the conservative Partido Popular, displays a “geopolitical vision of the national state” confirming the way that governmental bodies shape urban spaces and housing development policy. Moreover, urban development projects are considered a key feature of municipal politics, central to the political agenda of the Autonomous Community of Madrid. Social fragmentation and ideological colonization as a result of neoliberalism have been especially successful in this region of Madrid.25 Contrary to popular belief, the state played a central role in housing commodification and financialization processes, shedding light on the neoliberal turn at the national level. Most of these changes are related to predatory lending offering bank mortgages and similar products to poor people usually deprived of a strong economic support net.26 The scope of public policies aiming to transform the “moral economy” of Spain have been more intensively surveyed by social scientists than philosophers. In this vein, Palomera recently addressed the way housing booms, such as that of Barcelona’s Ciutat Meridiana, created obstacles for integration of precarious immigrant workers in buildings occupied by middle-class residents. He parsed the mechanisms implemented by the mental and practical colonization of the finance economy and its deep impact on the forms of life of immigrant people in urban Catalonia: as a result of the late housing boom and the above-mentioned policies, a fracture has emerged between old and new residents: between those who would like to live in a community of homeowners and small families close to the “middle-class” promise and those who live in highly volatile households; between an older population with the need for a specific form of public resource (pensions) and a new generation of migrants who are more impoverished and have greater need of state support (school textbooks and food stamps, unemployment subsidies, “minimum income for integration,” etc.). This fracture crystallizes in the space of the community in each building, where the economic obstacles to the new working-class generation become manifest. The misunderstandings between the more established and the more precarious underline the general perception among residents that they live in parallel worlds between which communication is hardly possible.27

The lack of interaction between social groups is a direct outcome of the neoliberal housing agenda, which favors a model of property acquisition and indebtment and impedes others modes of payment, as financial regulations

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determine access to the housing products circulating in the market. Palomera also provides an account of how financial regulations favoring real estate promotion led to the collapse of solidarity and mutual aid in precarious immigrant communities in Spain, insofar as these groups were targeted by being offered predatory subprime mortgages, one of the chief reasons for the financial crisis of 2008. Other empirical explorations carried out by Palomera and Vetta28 highlight the resistance displayed by the “losers” of the housing crisis toward examining the true causes of their precarious situation, while also considering that resentment toward elites and institutional corruption may harbor some hope for political transformation within this social group: ruined subcontractors did not generally challenge the exploitative structure of labor relations in construction. Some of them did not even see subcontracting as a problem, and other actually wished they could have reached the positions of privilege of their contractors above them. But the resentment that many of them showed towards elites, political corruption and parasitic practices also opened the possibility of transformative antagonism.29

The anthropological exploration of this economic sector confirms the interrelation between labor, financialization, and the making of a new model of citizenship, insofar as the ruin of certain sectors related to residential construction generates radical mental shifts for those whose existence relies its success. Thus, it is time to defetishize the real estate model of business, which idealizes the landlord and oppresses the tenant. This model should be viewed, instead, for what it is: the outcome of a distribution of roles whose epistemic framework jeopardizes the constitutional right to housing and reduces public development land. At present, very few in Spanish society expect that public housing programs on a municipal or regional scale might contribute to help increase available housing and thus make it easier for citizens to acquire a home of their own. In fact, the percentage of public housing in the country has become too scant to make an observable change in access to homeownership. In sum, the Spanish real estate sector has destroyed collective bonds and social interdependence through the pressure of finance bubbles impeding any experience of a commonwealth. The sphere of housing financialization has also promoted the Thatcherist idea that society is made up of “individuals” and not of “groups.” Just as ancient bonds of solidarity frayed and broke as the result of the spread of the financialization Spanish society, the social translation of emotions such as frustration, malaise, hate and resentment also began to take different directions. These feelings, unfortunately, do not always lead to political mobilization, but rather to the harassment of out groups considered insufficiently representative of the country’s ethnic,

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religious, and cultural traits. Salmela and von Scheve have accurately analyzed the characteristics of these negative feelings: Right-wing resentment at outgroups may be mediated by resentment.—The repression of negative self-focused emotions, particularly shame, and the transformation of these emotions into anger, resentment, and hate at generic others—whereas left-wing resentment may emerge from the acknowledgement and social sharing of negative self-focused emotions, which allows and supports their transformation into anger and indignation at particular others, but also into pride, joy, and hope similarly as in various civil rights movement.30

It is a fact that the increasing financialization of the housing market has meant a substantial deterioration of the quality of lived experience of immigrants and racialized people, an evolution especially blatant in the case of Spanish society. As this marginalized group was immediately identified as a potential source of growth for the financial housing market, subprime mortgages were produced on a global scale to be offered to them. Moreover, the rational choice frameworks underpinning real estate loans and mortgages quickly isolated these people from their traditional networks of care and support, impoverishing their social life. Suddenly outcast, immigrant people in Spain began to take decisions about their lives under the cultural and economic pressure and ideological dominance of social finance, with the ideals of homeownership and white-collars jobs as a symbolic reference. At the same time, buildings occupied by majority immigrant tenants or by owners with unpaid mortgages began to be branded as dangerous ghettos destined to ruin the network of public services (education, health, housing) in the area, and thus encouraging “pure Spanish” people to flee the area to guarantee their own welfare. The pervasive character of these beliefs and the “hermeneutical injustice” undergirding them succeeded in installing the fear of being too “different” or not “normal” enough in the eyes of the state, in the Spanish middle class.31 Naturally, the idea of the “centaur state”32 spread a “pervasive doctrine” that determined the behavior of socially disparate subjects, confirming the capacity of the real estate sector to train the population to adopt values at odds with their traditional social experiences, especially in the case of immigrant people. Saving money, then, appears as a new ritual figure that the subject is required to perform at whatever price, exhausting the already low incomes of this vulnerable set of people. Alt-right populists and other conservative forces have, quite perversely, considered this vulnerable population as useful for both increasing the number of people indebted to banks, and simultaneously in protecting the expectations of social advancement of the middle-class, as immigrants suffer the harshest consequences of financial crises. Thus, the uncivil pedagogy triggered by financialization does

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not extend basic economic rights, but rather fosters discrimination between “normal” and “pathological” social agents, whose self-reliance and savings will determine their “provisional” inclusion in society. This inclusion in society, and access to a minimum right to well-being and welfare, is thus always indefinite for these marginalized groups. NEOLIBERAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF WORK AS INSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGE The success of discourses stoking fear and anger in Spain have been quite telling reactions against the development of a more solidary society. Recalling the terms used by Pohlhaus,33 the “hermeneutical imperialism” ingrained in the neoliberal analysis of phenomena such as labor precarity is obvious, impeding the emergence of “epistemic resistances”34 capable of criticizing the social suffering resulting from the failures of modern labor systems, the financialization of the housing market, and the decrease of public services designed to protect citizens. Neoliberal structures, thus, invest greatly in discourses narrowing the social and political imaginary of community, weakening trust in solidarity, the commitment to redistribution, and the universal right to basic social welfare. The main goal of this sort of behavioral device is to create a conservative backlash able to disavow the acknowledgment of any social indebtment to leftist politics, for instance related to the universal right to health, housing, or education. On the contrary, leftist movements and achievements are depicted as wasteful uses of public money. Moreover, according to this ideology, the spending of tax money on social programs is deemed to be a betrayal of the brave middle class, who feel embarrassed or ashamed for needing public sustenance, in contrast with the alleged tendency of immigrant people to behave as beggars. Even if this account of social pathologies concerning the European population—particularly of southern Europe—presents itself as a neutral and objective perception of reality, the irrationality undergirding this strategy of neoliberalism as a cultural environment uses emotions, and particularly “sad passions” (following Spinoza’s Ethics) to attain ideological hegemony. In this vein, the “imperative of happiness,” denounced by the mentioned Ahmed as a steady pressure to exhibit existential success reveals the dark side of Foucault’s culture de soi characteristic of our neoliberal era. In these circumstances, the subject is educated to interpret frustration as the consequence of personal faults and lack of effort. Other authors also highlight the wrath, rage, and anger that stoke the alt-right: Angry citizens might be less likely to carefully scrutinize populist parties and candidates, meaning that efforts to combat fake news a so-called “post-truth”

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politics might not easily resonate with them. Instead, fighting against situations perceived to be unfair or morally outrageous could help to diminish the emotional state most fertile for populism.35

Yet, we must also mention, as scholars such as Quintana36 have insightfully claimed, the emancipatory drives that the aforementioned feelings may fuel in concrete circumstances of desperation and distrust in social institutions. In these circumstances, common people decide to organize themselves according to the common goods available to them to guarantee the material conditions necessary for a livable life, in keeping with Butler’s stress on the materiality of life. In this model of a “struggle for life,” the values of community and redistribution, rather than ruthless competition, orient decisions. Unfortunately, in contrast with this experience of commonality, Spanish governments of recent years have barely addressed labor legislation, with the exception of the current labor and social economy ministry run by Yolanda Díaz. This government, also a sponsor of the Sumar movement, (i.e. Add), has decidedly attempted, in recent years, to buttress the guarantee of a dignified life through labor law reforms. These meritorious efforts of the leftist Spanish labor ministry to bring order to a highly segmented job market aside, labor reforms in the country confirm the long history of precarious employment in the country. Two milestones in this evolution are the National Employment Agreement (1982), when trade unions accepted short-term and precarious employment as an tool for reducing unemployment, and the Interconfederal Employment Agreement (1997), which enlarged grounds of legitimate dismissal, allowing firms more flexibility to lay off their employees. At present, the complicated state of employment in Spain impedes a neat evaluation of several phenomena that have devalued work for decades, both in Spain in southern Europe as a whole. These phenomena include the increase in parttime (15.2 percent according to the Spanish Labor Force Survey in 2020), nonstandard, and so-called “bullshit” jobs since the 2008–2013 crisis, which have had a particular impact on women, especially immigrants, caregivers and gig workers. Moreover, an appraisal of part-time works heightens the cultural-political tensions visible in the social implications of this kind of employment. On the one hand, arguments for this model highlight the benefits of conciliation between family care and private life, and the potential for workers to transition to full-time jobs. On the other hand, arguments against this model stress low wages, labor precarity, and lack of benefits and opportunities for training and advancement. In my view, we must address part-time and nonstandard work in southern European societies from an intersectional standpoint focused on the lives of both immigrants and native workers able to elucidate the interconnections among work, class, and race. In this vein, it will be helpful to analyze the hermeneutical framework underpinning the

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usual institutional answer to labor precarity: that full-time work continues to be viewed as the only path for guaranteeing labor equality. Taking into account contemporary transformations of labor, it is unsurprising that scholarship has considered trade unions the unique bureaucratic referent for guaranteeing workers meaningful political agency. The increase in horizontal workers organizations and grassroots movements aiming to buttress basic rights and strengthen labor solidarity is an established fact. When considering what the regulation of nonstandard forms of employment would entail, the most obvious answers would seem to either 1) turn these workers into wage laborers as opposed to freelance contractors or 2) to legally recognize the category of “nonstandard worker” as a way of eliminating the oppression linked to these labor practices. A quick look at the “riders law” implemented in Spain in August 2021, shows the power imbalance inherent to these new forms of work and efforts at regulating them. As a result of this regulatory change, under which companies such as Glovo, Deliveroo, and Uber were forced to hire and pay all of their employees as wage laborers, one unintended effect emerged: these companies fired large parts of their platforms’ workers or simply quit Spain.37 Another factor complicating regulation is the way in which nonstandard jobs are often disregarded because of the ideological patterns ingrained in public aid administrations, which exhibit a widespread distrust of this type of work. Quite similarly, the Spanish administration systematically devalues individual testimony, and the situated knowledge it entails, in favor of long and bureaucratic procedures to claim basic social rights, characteristic of a top-down system. This rejection of the voices of marginalized people claiming their basic human rights shows that states are more interested in controlling the population than in receiving accurate feedback on the needs of their people. In this context, the allocation of a guaranteed living wage in Spain, and the failure of the attempt to rely on NGOs to determine those entitled to social security, are telling. These examples beg the question: does the institution of the state encompass all workers and their interests, or does its exclusionary action leave many people behind? The resistance to engage in a more active cooperation between civil society and statist structures to strengthen social rights might benefit, as previously mentioned, from the potential of the workplace as a useful hub for learning how to adopt democratic habits.38 At the same time, the interdependence flourishing in spaces of work might support a democratic epistemic turn away from the hegemony of hierarchized specialization and epistocracy in labor frameworks, which continue to have a deep impact in the making of democratic public institutions. As stated by the pragmatist Dewey nearly a century ago, democracy is based on a prior way of life, whose main tenet is “that all those who are affected by social institutions must have a share in producing and managing them.”39 In my view, work is one of the social practices able

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to trigger a sort of Copernican turn in neoliberal times, insofar as it is characterized by a material interdependence with others and a system of interconnected operations. Naturally, remote and so-called “immaterial” workers lack such direct access to this level of materiality. Still, to counter the alt-right’s promotion of the idea that immigrant people should accept “bullshit jobs” and grueling hours for low incomes without protest, we must unearth the objective and material features underpinning every type of work and analyze how each form of work contributes to the welfare of the community.40 CONCLUDING REMARKS The effects of neoliberal cultural politics on Spanish society are manifold. Among them, the recent transformation of the state into an allegedly neutral observer-state, charged with protecting people deserving of social recognition, while disregarding those marginalized and impeded from integrating into society, stands out. Philosophy has traditionally devoted attention to institutions as social facts. On the one side, the post-structuralist view of Deleuze analyzed social intelligence as inspired by the legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment.41 Thus he defined the institution as a “procedure of satisfaction,” intended to transform instinctive tendencies into a new milieu, stressing the fact that institutions are not eternal or essential. On the contrary, all institutions are related to a concrete social context (as the examples of marriage and property confirm), and democracy, thusly, would be considered a political model with many deliberative institutions and few laws. On the other side, an analytical philosopher such as Searle42 addressed the differences between physical facts and social facts, highlighting that the latter are both ontologically subjective and epistemically objective, as collective intentional facts. From the standpoint of both philosophical frameworks, new phenomena such as the financialization of the housing market and the dismantling of traditional patterns of labor challenge the capacity of institutions to provide satisfactory answers to the demands of increasingly precarious subjects. In a nutshell, the gap between state institutions and social demands has expanded, threatening the survival of common trust in these structures. In my view, and as social philosopher Jaeggi has suggested, it is more productive to assess current institutions not as positive components of our ethical life, but rather to consider them in terms of the pathologies they bring about, thus developing a Hegelian approach to social pathologies as set forth by Honneth: [A]good institution is one in which the individuals realize their interests and also one they can identify with. An institution without life remains an external duress. Such an entity is characterized by rigidity, which can be illustrated by

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the fact that things that are recalcitrant or do not follow the institutional procedures can no longer enter the institution’s field of vision.43

I fully agree with this account of institutions, as a “good institution” succeeds insofar as it maintains a dialogue with the material conditions of social life and claims, rather than inhibiting its own historical transformation. People exposed to “contradictory class locations,”44 as is the case of all subjects under the hegemony of neoliberal rationality, develop an ambiguous relationship with the institutional realm as an effect of the discord they feel between their belonging to a social group and the set of beliefs and expectations they recognize as valuable. As has been claimed in this chapter, the epistemic limitations of the useful expression “moral economy,” which would appear to refer only to equal and horizontal livelihoods and grassroots economies, also entails an “economy of obedience,”45 which deeply jeopardize the material freedom and dignity of human bodies on a global scale. To stage sound and lasting resistances against the havoc wrought by the neoliberal cultural revolution requires us to provide space and encouragement for experiencing the interdependence involved in the preservation of a good life as a common commitment. This emancipatory agenda should accurately dissect the emotional roots of the making of the homo oeconomicus, forced to assume unpayable debts as an act of sacrifice toward the real estate market and to accept the precarious labor conditions inherent to co. Moreover, we must take into account the material genealogy of neoliberal dogmatic “common sense,” imposed globally by corporate lobbying that considers any popular dissent to be the result of an allegedly outdated leftist agenda. Popular resistance against neoliberal sacrificial demands should not be disavowed, but rather encouraged and recognized by institutions, albeit their reduced symbolic authority and capacity of coercion. In times of social suffering and upheavals against neoliberal inequalities, institutions must also meet the symbolic and material challenges they face in order to deserve popular trust and recognition. NOTES 1. This chapter has been supported by the following ongoing research projects: Precariedad laboral, cuerpo y vida dañada. Una investigación de filosofía social (PID2019–105803GB-I0) and the CAM Macrogroup On Trust-CM (H2019/HUM-5699). 2. I recommend Jaeggi’s recent approach to this intertwinement between economic processes and objective and symbolic construction of human life. See especially Critique of Forms of Life and “Economy as Social Practice.”

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3. See the use of this expression in Narotzky/Besnier, “Crisis, Value, Hope: Rethinking the Economy” and Hart/Laville/Cattani (eds.), The Human Economy. 4. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 233. 5. Jaeggi, Pathologies of Work, 74. 6. Brown, Undoing the Demos. Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. 7. Pinzani considers this ideological colonization as the outcome of “pervasive doctrines,” whose pressure determines neoliberal “subjectivation processes.” See Pinzani, Critique of Forms of Life . . . , 141. 8. Gambetti, Exploratory Notes on the Origins of New Fascisms, 17–18. 9. See Mudde/Rovira-Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction. 10. See Palomera and Vetta, “Moral economy: rethinking a radical concept” on how financialization impacts the moral economy of social groups. 11. See Jaeggi, “A Wide Concept of Economy: Economy as a Social Practice and the Critique of Capitalism.” 12. See Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 86–87. 13. Kolers, A Moral Theory of Solidarity, 61. 14. J. Shklar, Faces of Injustice, 126 15. See about this Young, 2004, 388: “I have elaborated this concept of political responsibility through the example of the apparel industry and the social movement seeking changes in working conditions in it for at least two reasons. This example exhibits structural injustice where some of the social positions in the structure are fairly easy to identify.” 16. See Lobb, “Critical Empathy.” 17. See Fricker, Epistemic Injustice, 162–63. 18. See Zahavi, “Beyond Empathy.” 19. Fricker. 20. Broncano, Puntos ciegos. Ignorancia pública y conocimiento privado. 21. See Rolnik Urban Warfare: Housing under the Empire of Finance and “Late Neoliberalism: The Financialization of Homeownership and Housing Rights.” 22. García-Lamarca and Kaika, “‘Mortgaged lives’: the biopolitics of debt and housing financialization.” 23. Vetta and Palomera, in “Concretes stories in Southern Europe” conduct an ethnographic survey of two local housing firms based in Greece and Spain, carrying out telling interviews with contractors and subcontractors in this sector, and also with engineers and workers. This exploration casts light over several sources of social suffering I tackle in this paper. García-Lamarca/Kaika highlight the fact that about 1 million mortgages were issued by banks in Spain between 2003 and 2007, which results in disciplinary effects on the population. I fully agree with the aim of these authors to shed light on the complex intertwinement between day-to-day life, global financial speculation, and the future urban agenda. 24. Orta Mascaró, “The geopolitical construction of Madrid as a city-region and its discontents: understanding the relevance of the ‘national’ scale for the urban process.” 25. See Palomera, “How Did Finance Capital Infiltrate the World of the Urban Poor?,” 233: “At a time when public debate seems to be veering towards working-class neighborhoods, and when the rhetoric of exclusion is attempting to

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monopolise the social space, it is crucial to provide explanations that illuminate the true roots of social fragmentation.” See also an account related to this issue Sánchez Madrid, “Pobreza, economía moral y espacios de resistencia social.” 26. Rolnik has stressed this intervention of the state in the social success of financial products to access to homeownership in Late Neoliberalism . . . , 1064: “Taking the example of housing, it is very clear that not only was the state never absent but, more than that, it has always played a central role in the process of commodification and financialization. . . . It is through the wholesale intervention of central and local governments that a massive spoliation of the assets of the poor has taken place, opening up new frontiers—land hitherto part of the commons (such as public housing or traditional informal settlements)—to financial investors.” 27. Palomera, “How Did Finance Capital Infiltrate the World of the Urban Poor? . . . ,” 232 28. Palomera, Vetta, “Concrete Stories in Southern Europe. . . .” 29. Palomera, Vetta, “Concrete stories in Southern Europe . . . ,” 903. 30. Salmela/von Scheve, “Emotional Dynamics of Right . . . ,” 29. 31. See about this issue Forkert, Austerity as a Public Mood, 177. 32. Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. 33. Pohlhaus, “Varieties of Epistemic Injustice” and “Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice: Toward a Theory of Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance.” 34. See Medina, The Epistemology of Resistance. Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations and “Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism: Social Silences and Shared Hermeneutical Responsibilities.” 35. Rico/Guinjoan/Anduiza, “The Emotional Underpinnings of Populism . . . ,” 456. The empirical survey carried out by Rico/Guinjoan/Anduiza is quite telling about the sympathy that the angry subject displays toward populism and authoritarian politics. 36. See Quintana, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. 37. See González-Ricoy/Queralt, “No Masters Above: Testing Five Arguments for Self-Employment.” 38. Deranty/Renault, “Democratizing Workplaces from below. Beyond Workplace Republicanism.” 39. Dewey 1991 [1937], 217–18. 40. See Deranty, Repressed Materiality . . . , 135: “Whichever economic activity one takes as an example of a service, whether it is the commodification of an activity that was undertaken in the private sphere (tourism, catering, transport), or as prosthesis to human communication and intelligence (telecommunications, information technology), or as the outsourcing of activities that the Fordist firm used to undertake internally, in all these areas, service involves a material support, whether that support was already owned by the service-user and is simply changed, hopefully enhanced, by the service-provider (cleaners from outside the firm ensuring the cleanliness of the work place), or whether, as still happens in most cases, a material product is delivered to the user (even if a telephone company describes itself as service provider, the

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telephone and the servicing of the activity of telephoning are only made possible by material elements). The undeniable abstraction and complexification of objects and activities should not lead to the extreme conclusion whereby the whole world of the modern economy would have become ‘immaterial.’” 41. See Deleuze, ‘Instincts and Institutions.’ 42. 1995, 8. 43. Jaeggi, “Was ist eine (gute) Institution,” 542–43. 44. Olin Wright. 45. Gago/Caballero, Una lectura feminista de la deuda. Vivas, libres y desendeudadas nos queremos.

REFERENCES Ahmed, Sarah. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Broncano, Fernando. Puntos ciegos. Ignorancia pública y conocimiento privado. Madrid: Lengua de Trapo, 2019. Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books, 2015. Dejours, Christoph/Deranty, Jean-Philippe/Renault, Emmanuel/Smith, Nicholas H. (ed.). The Return of Work in Critical Theory. Self, Society, Politics. New York: Columbia Univerisity Press, 2018. Deleuze, Gilles. “Instincts and Institutions,” trans. John Duda. Autonomedia, 2003, http:​//​dev​.autono-media.org/node/2525. Deranty, Jean-Philippe. “Repressed Materiality: Retrieving the Materialism in Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition.” Critical Horizons 7/1 (2006): 113–40. Deranty, Jean-Philippe, and Emmanuel Renault. “Democratizing Workplaces from below. Beyond Workplace Republicanism,” pp. 150–65. In K. Breen and P. Deranty. Whither Work? The Politics and Ethics of Contemporary Work. London: Routledge, 2021. Dewey, John. “Democracy and Educational Administration.” Planning and Changing, vol. 22, 3–4 (1991 [1937]): 134–40. Forkert, Katrin. Austerity as Public Mood. Social Anxieties and Social Struggles. New York/London, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic Injustice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Gago, Verónica, and Luci Caballero. Una lectura feminista de la deuda. Vivas, libres y desendeudadas nos queremos. Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, 2021. Gambetti, Zeynep. “Explanatory Notes on the Origins of New Fascisms,” Critical Times 3/1 (2020), 1–32. García-Lamarca, Melissa, and Maria Kaika, “‘Mortgaged lives’: the biopolitics of debt and housing financialization.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41 (2016): 313–27.

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González-Ricoy, Ignacio, and Jahel Queralt (2021), “No Masters Above: Testing Five Arguments for Self-Employment,” pp. 87–101. In K. Breen and P. Deranty, Whither Work? The Politics and Ethics of Contemporary Work, London, Routledge. Hart, Keith, Jean-Louis Laville, and Antonio David Cattani (eds.), The Human Economy. Cambridge: Polity, 2010. Hegel, G. W. F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Transl. H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Jaeggi, Rahel, Critique of Forms of Life. Cambridge /Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2019. ———, “A Wide Concept of Economy: Economy as a Social Practice and the Critique of Capitalism.” Journal for Cultural Research, 22:2 (2018): 122–25. ———, “Pathologies of Work.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 45, N. 3/4 (2017): 59–76. ———. “Was ist eine (gute) Institution.” In Axel Honneth & Rainer Forst (eds.), Sozialphilosophie und Kritik, pp. 528–44. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2019. Kolers, Avery. A Moral Theory of Solidarity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Lobb, Andrea. “Critical Empathy.” Constellations 24/4 (2017): 594–607. Orta Mascaró, Albert, “The geopolitical construction of Madrid as a city-region and its discontents: understanding the relevance of the ‘national’ scale for the urban process,” Urban Geography, 2022 (published online October 18 2022). Medina, José. The Epistemology of Resistance. Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012a. ———. “Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism: Social Silences and Shared Hermeneutical Responsibilities.” Social Epistemology 26/2 (2012b): 201–20. Mudde, Cas and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. Populism. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Narotzky, Susana, Niko Besnier. “Crisis, Value, Hope: Rethinking the Economy.” Current Anthropology 55/9 (2014): 4–16. Palomera, Jaime, “How Did Finance Capital Infiltrate the World of the Urban Poor? Homeownership and Social Fragmentation in a Spanish Neighborhood.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38/1 (2014): 218–35. Palomera, Jaime, and Theodora Vetta, “Concrete Stories in Southern Europe: Financialisation and Inequality in the Construction Chain.” Antipodes 52/3 (2020): 888–907. ———, “Moral economy: Rethinking a radical concept” Anthropological Theory, 16/4 (2016): 413–32. Pinzani, Alessandro. “Critique of Forms of Life or Critique of Pervasive Doctrines.” Critical Horizons 22/2 (2021): 140–49. Pohlhaus, Gaile. “Varieties of Epistemic Injustice.” In: Kidd, I. J.—Medina, J.— Pohlhaus, G. Jr. (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, pp. 43–71. New York: Routledge & CRC Press, 2019. ———. 2012. “Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice: Toward a Theory of Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance.” Hypatia 27 (4): 715–35.

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Quintana, Laura, Dissensus: on Politics and Aesthetics. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. Rico, Guillem, Marc Guinjoan, and Eva Anduiza. “The Emotional Underpinnings of Populism: How Anger and Fear Affect Populist Attitudes.” Swiss Political Science Review 23/4 (2017): 444–61. Rolnik, Raquel. Urban Warfare: Housing under the Empire of Finance, David Harvey (foreword), English transl. Felipe Hirschhorn. London/NY: Verso, 2019. ———. “Late Neoliberalism: The Financialization of Homeownership and Housing Rights.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37/3 (2013): 1058–66. Salmela, Mikko, and Christian von Scheve. “Emotional Dynamics of Right- and Left-Wing Political Populism.” Humanity & Society 42/4 (2018): 434–54. Sánchez Madrid, Nuria. “Pobreza, economía moral y espacios de resistencia social.” In N. Sánchez Madrid/J.M. Forte (ed.). Precariedad, exclusión, marginalidad. Una historia conceptual de la pobreza, pp. 345–66. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2022. Searle, John. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: The Free Press, 1995. Shklar, Judith. The Faces of Injustice. Yale University Press, 1990. Vetta, Theodora, and Jaime Palomera. “Concrete Stories in Southern Europe: Financialisation an Inequality in the Construction Chain.” Antipode 52/3 (2020): 888–907. Wacquant, Loïc. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham: Duke University, 2009. Young, Iris Marion. “Responsibility and Global Labor Justice.” The Journal of Political Philosophy 12, no. 4 (2004): 365–88. Zahavi, Dan. “Beyond Empathy.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2001): 151–67. Zurn, Christopher, “Social Pathologies as Second-Order Disorders.” In Danielle Petherbridge (ed.). Axel Honneth: Critical Essays: With a Reply by Axel Honneth, pp. 345–70. Leiden: Brill Academic, 2011.

PART II

Neoliberal Subjectivation and The Effects of Depoliticizing Psychic Suffering

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Chapter 3

Economics Is the Continuation of Psychology by Other Means Psychic Suffering and Neoliberalism as a Moral Economy1 Vladimir Safatle

It was not depression, it was capitalism. Graffiti in Chile, on the occasion of the 2019 uprising. The year was 2015, the Greek economic crisis was at its height, with continuous tension between Greek government negotiators seeking to demonstrate the irrationality of the economic policies implemented in Greece, following the 2008 crisis and the representatives of the so-called “troika,” composed of the main Greek creditors. Faced with the Greek government’s desire to take a different path than that imposed after the previous crisis, IMF president Christine Lagarde went to the press to demand an end to the “childish behavior” of her opponents and said that she hoped to retake the dialogue “with adults in the room.” The next day, the vice president of the European Commission, Viviane Reding, echoed Lagarde’s formulation, saying that it was time to speak with adults, and not with “rude children.” Implicit in these statements was the notion that to dissent was not to clash over different macroeconomic views, but to act like children unaware of the “responsibility,” corresponding “obligations,” of economic freedom. The debate was thus framed as a question of maturity versus the views of a psychological minority,2 with the voice of the Greeks cast as the pathological expression of irrationality. 45

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Perhaps few were surprised by the use of psychological and moral vocabulary in what was an eminently political and economic discussion. After all, this rhetorical technique had become increasingly common around the world, as fixes to economic crises were sold as “austerity” policies. Until that point, however, the term “economic austerity theory” had not come into being, not least because “austerity” was not a technical term in economic theory, but rather one that came directly from moral philosophy.3 The widespread use of the term appears only with neoliberal hegemony, independent of the fact that policies to control state spending were previously based on Locke, Adam Smith, and Hume. The designation of such policies as “austerity” was significant in its display of the way moral values are ​​ mobilized to justify the rational processes of social and economic intervention. Opposition to austerity was seen as a moral fault, a lack of appreciation for the hard work of others, and indicative of an infantile inability to responsibly save money. In this way, to criticize austerity was to deny oneself the possibility of recognition as an autonomous and responsible moral subject. Conversely, it was seen as moral to demand that individuals stop seeking “protection” in the paternal arms of the welfare state and take “responsibility” for their own lives, adapting to the adult world of a “society of risk” (conveniently neglecting to discuss whether these risks apply equally to all). Certain questions raised by this episode, however, have since remained unresolved. What were terms based in moral philosophy doing in the midst of economic debates, and how did they get there? Were they mere metaphors, used innocently as a way to “dramatize” the problem? Or, on the other hand, does the use of metaphor indicate a conscious decision to draw a connection between disparate systems of reference? As mentioned previously, we are witnessing an ever-increasing tendency to use psychological and moral terms to discuss economic processes, as if a certain moral psychology were colonizing multiple spheres of social life through economic discourse. To be sure, this phenomenon is not exactly new—as Stuart Mill stated, in the late nineteenth century, political economy was the science of the production and distribution of wealth, insofar as these depend on ‘the laws of human nature’ or ‘science,’ (moral or psychological laws governing the production and distribution of wealth). At the time, the reference to moral or psychological laws was vague enough to refer simply to the rationality of an alleged “desire for wealth” inscribed in the heart of human passions. Political economy would thus analyze social dynamics as aimed at fulfilling the human desire for enrichment, or rather the achievement of: “the greatest number of necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries, with the smallest quantity of labor and physical self-denial with which they can be obtained in the existing state of knowledge.”4

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Mill was careful to affirm that such a principle of rationality was a “premise” that could have no basis in fact. It could however, have effects in the concrete dimension, with “appropriate concessions.” This meant, among other things, that reducing human motivation to the desire for wealth was a useful abstraction, not a general explanation of human behavior in all its infinite variables and their effects. What we see today, however, is something different, namely, the justification of economic actions and the paralysis of criticism through the massive mobilization of psychological and moral discourses. This can lead us to question the epistemology of economic discourse in an era when the economy appears completely independent from politics, in the same way it had previously succeeded in divorcing itself from religion.5 We can ask ourselves if this autonomy of economic discourse in relation to politics is, in fact, the clearest expression of a violent political decision. In this sense, we must meditate on the meaning of this unexpected relationship between the economy’s independence from the political sphere, as well as its transmutation into moral psychology, as if one process was only possible through the other. The independence of the economic sphere, and its position of unlimited power in defining and managing social relations, goes hand in hand with the legitimation of its injunctions as a moral psychology, that is, as a discourse of moral and social prescriptions regarding psychological development and maturation. This leads us to affirm that the empire of the economy aids the transformation of the social realm into one indexed by what we could call a “moral economy.” This transformation holds great consequences not only for the means of production and circulation of wealth, but also results in the elimination of the political sphere as an effective space for deliberation and decision by reducing criticism to the condition of a pathology. This elimination, as I attempt to show, has deep consequences for psychic subjugation and social suffering. Here I defend the thesis that the growth of this strategy of psychological domination is the result of neoliberal hegemony. It is a fact that the texts of the Mont Pélérin Society, the group formed in the forties to disseminate neo-liberal ideals, do not let us forget. Let us remember, for example, the beginning of the text presenting the objectives of the Mont Pélérin Society: The central values of civilization are in danger . . . The group holds that these developments have been fostered by the growth of a view of history which denies all absolute moral standards and by the growth of theories which question the desirability of the rule of law.6

Note the exhortation to explain the alleged current crisis from its “moral and economic origins”—this attribution is extremely significant. The refusal of the

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primacy of private property and competitiveness would not only be an economic mistake, but more importantly, a moral fault. Its defense, then, should not only be based on its supposed economic effectiveness in wealth production, but also through the moral exhortation of the values o​ f free enterprise, “independence” from the state, and alleged individual self-determination. With this in mind, it is not difficult to understand why economists like Ludwig von Mises attempt to explain the motivations for criticizing liberalism as a “pathological mental attitude,” namely: “resentment and a neurasthenic condition that could be called the ‘Fourier Complex.’”7 In this view, resentment would characterize a criticism of liberalism based in the morally reprehensible desire for the misfortune of the other who has achieved more than myself. The so-called Fourier complex, according to Mises, would be a “serious nervous system disease” characterized by an escape into delusion as a result of frustrations regarding life expectations. The ultimate delusion of the “psychotic” Fourier would consist in denying the finitude of natural resources and the necessary self-sacrifice through labor. In other words, the denied “reality” is the alleged reality of scarcity and necessary sacrifice. This finitude, with its clearly moral and religious connotations, appears here as a guide for economic action, reviving a fundamental theme of modern political economy.8 It is also worth noting that this very specific psychologizing of the economic field, in eliminating the possibility of political discourse by questioning its “rationality” does, in turn, have a kind of reverse effect, visible in the complete redescription of the motivational logic of political action in a grammar of emotions. It is increasingly evident that political struggles are no longer described in eminently political terms such as justice, equity, exploitation, or dispossession, but through emotional terms such as: hate, frustration, fear, resentment, anger, envy, and hope.9 Likewise, contemporary politicians seem to specialize in mobilizing sectors of the population by addressing them as eminently psychological subjects. Political confrontations are cast in terms of “offense” and “disrespect,” while political promises are permeated by exhortations to “care,” to “support.” The emotionally charged and often offensive language of current political dialogue has another crucial effect. As we know, speech constructed as “offensive” aims to produce a subject who will react as “offended.” Offensive speech is cunning. It seeks, initially, to reduce the generic solidarity felt before an injustice done not only to the individual, but against all or, rather, against all through one. It prevents the emergence of the reaction of “all,” because it singles out and offends the individual. We don’t say: “you have offended Brazilian society in me,” but rather, “you have offended me.” The confrontation thus appears as something between “you” and “me”—it is no longer a political matter, but one of respect for psychological integrity.

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It is a fact that multiple strategies of psychologization have been active in the political sphere since long ago, one of the oldest being the reduction of political dynamics to the continuation of family relations. Casting political authorities as paternal or maternal figures, or alluding to subjects as equals, or fraternal figures, aims to convert social demands into demands based on the expectations of love and recognition proper to the family nucleus. This parallel drawn between the social body and the familial structure has a clear function: “harmonious relationships” are seen to hold the strength to eliminate the often seemingly insurmountable character of social conflicts. The metaphor relating political and social relations and family dynamics presupposes the social fantasy of the family as the nucleus of naturalized, non-problematic hierarchical relationships of authority based on love and devotion—something far removed from the Freudian explanation of the family as a neurotic nucleus. THE NEOLIBERAL TOTAL STATE If we assume, however, that neoliberal hegemony requires the explanation of economics as a moral psychology, we must examine the reasons for this process and its consequences. Let us return, for a moment, to the year of 1938, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II, when several economists, sociologists, journalists, and philosophers came together to discuss what was presumed to be the end of liberalism. This historic meeting was known as the Walter Lippmann Symposium, named after an influential American journalist who had written one of the most widely discussed books of the time, The Good Society,” and was also one of the organizers of the event. In the book, Lippmann insisted that the world was seeing the overthrow of liberalism due to the rise of communism, on the one hand, and fascism on the other.10 Even capitalism would soon be under the hegemony of Keynesian interventionism. Naturally, Lipmann posited that we should examine the reasons for liberalism’s demise and what could be done to reverse the situation. The Symposium had produced a critical view of the belief, typical of nineteenth-century Manchester liberalism, that the free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and competitiveness would spring up almost spontaneously in individuals, as long as we were able to radically limit economic intervention and social security programs. In fact, they held, liberal freedom would have to be produced and defended. As Margaret Thatcher would say decades later: “Economics is the method. The aim is to change hearts and souls.” This change in hearts and souls would require massive intervention and programs of reeducation until individuals could finally see themselves as

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“entrepreneurs of the self,” having internalized economic rationality as the only possible form of rationality. Here we can see clearly that the idea that commonly held view that neoliberalism seeks a society with less state intervention is simply false—in comparison with classical liberalism, neoliberalism actually represents much more state intervention. The real question is: if it was no longer an intervention in the sphere of regulation of economic activity, in what areas, then, did the state intervene? For neoliberals, even Keynesian regulation was seen as unbearable socialism—although here it is worth remembering that the level of economic regulation accepted by German Ordo-liberalism and its “social market economy” was higher than that preached, for example, by the Austrian School that would set the tone for Yankee neoliberalism. In lieu of economic regulation, then, neoliberalism preached direct interventions in the configuration of social conflicts and in the psychic structure of individuals. More than an economic model, neoliberalism was an experiment in social engineering. Put differently, neoliberalism is a mode of deep social intervention in the dimension of production of conflicts, for in order to protect freedom understood as entrepreneurship and free enterprise, the state must depoliticize society to prevent politics from interfering with the independence of the economy. It should, mainly, eliminate a specific type of conflict: the questioning of the grammar of regulation of social life. This means, concretely, removing all support from associations, institutions and unions that seek to question this notion of freedom as self-entrepreneurship and self-ownership. The deepening of this process requires a complete elimination of the grammar of conflict and objective contradiction. In other words, it is a question of moving from the social to the psychic, leading subjects to see themselves not as carriers and mobilizers of structural conflicts, but as performance operators, as optimizers of non-problematized markets.11 This necessitates erasing the notion of conflict from the constitution of the psychic structure, replacing it with a subjectivity obsessed with self-realization and the optimization of her performances. In accomplishing this, the mobilization of disciplinary internalization of moral assumptions is fundamental. For this reason, neoliberal forms of intervention take place on two levels, namely, on the social and psychic levels, because it is assumed that psychic conflicts can be understood as expressions of contradictions within processes of socialization and individuation. They are thus the marks of contradictions inherent to social life. On a first level, then, the neoliberal state acts directly to deregulate associative life and its pressure to redistribute goods and wealth, a point made explicit in the research of Gregoire Chamayou regarding the links between neoliberalism and fascism.12 For example, it may seem curious that one of the fathers of neoliberalism, Frederick Hayek, is an explicit advocate of the thesis of the need for provisional dictatorship as a condition for the realization of

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neoliberal freedom. Recall a significant excerpt from an interview in Chilean newspaper El Mercurio in 1981: I would say that, as a long-term institution, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system during a period of transition. Sometimes it is necessary for a country to have, for some time, a form of dictatorial power. As you know, it is possible for a dictator to govern liberally. And it is possible for a democracy to rule with a total lack of liberalism. Personally, I prefer a liberal dictator to a democratic government without liberalism.13

“Sometimes” appears here as an indication of a possibility always imminent in the event that society does not passively conform itself to neoliberal economic injunctions. Here it should be remembered that 1981 represents the year in which Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship was at its peak, with Hayek enthusiastic about the transformation of Chile into a laboratory for the ideas diligently preached by himself, Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, Ludwig von Mises and others. An impressive documentary on the neoliberal experience in Chile, Chicago Boys,14 is indicative of the true feelings of the group of economists responsible for implementing neoliberalism on our continent for the first time. At one point, when interviewers ask Pinochet’s former economy minister, Mr. Sergio de Castro, about what he felt upon seeing Palacio La Moneda being bombed by military planes until the death of President Allende, he says: “an immense joy. I knew this was what should be done.” In other words, this assassination was justified and necessary, as market freedom could only be implemented by silencing all those nonbelievers who would contest its results and logic. This ability to protecting the market, of course, requires a strong and limitless state able to silence society through violence, illustrating the way in which neoliberalism represents, in fact, the triumph of the state, and not its reduction to the minimum. The notion of provisional dictatorship will not be a detour in our analysis. Hayek had already made clear his fear of an unrestricted democracy—lest we forget his diatribes against an alleged “totalitarian democracy” or a “plebiscitary dictatorship” that would not respect the rule of law15. In Hayek’s view, a rule of law based on the liberal foundations of economics and politics would be the best medicine against the temptation to succumb to a bargaining process through which the state would become the mere coalition of the various interests of society. This would prevent the state from defending freedom (in this case, nothing more than the economic freedom to own private property) against the multiple interests of corporations in social life, thus subjecting the majority to the interests of organized minorities. Avoiding this form of submission of one individual’s interests to those of another would require

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everyone to submit to the rational rules and impersonal forces of the market, as if it were a matter of assuming self-transcendence. However, submitting ourselves to the supposed rationality of the laws of the economy requires a radical depoliticization of society, a violent refusal to question the autonomy of economic discourse. Such submission requires assuming the economy as a sovereign power, protected by a properly sovereign violence. This reflection of the authoritarian political nature of the neoliberal economy mirrors the model of social management found in Nazi theorists like Carl Schmitt.16 In this regard, let us remember how the discussion regarding the depoliticization of society, so necessary for the implementation of neoliberalism, can be found in the fascist notion of “total state.” As Marcuse already understood in the thirties, the notion of a “total state” had never been opposed to liberalism, and in fact, represented its necessary development within an environment of monopolistic capitalism. The liberal reduction of freedom to the freedom of the individual economic subject to own private-property backed by a legal-state guarantee remained the basis for the social structure of fascism. Marcuse thus warned that the fascist “total state” was compatible with the liberal idea of deregulation ​​ of economic activity and strong intervention in the political spheres of class struggle. Thus: The economic foundations of this move from liberal theory to totalitarian theory will be assumed as assumptions: they rest essentially on the change of capitalist society from mercantile and industrial capitalism, built on the free competition of individual autonomous entrepreneurs, to modern monopolistic capitalism, in which the modified relations of production (especially the large ‘units’ of cartels, trusts, etc.) require a strong state, mobilizing all the means of power17.

This connection between liberalism and fascism was presented by Carl Schmitt, who noted that parliamentary democracy, with its systems of negotiation, tended to create a “total state.”18 Having to cope with the multiple demands of various organized social sectors, parliamentary democracy would allow the state to intervene in all areas of life, regulating all dimensions of social conflict and thus becoming a mere emulation of the antagonisms present in social life. Countering this would not require a weaker state, but simply another form of the state: a “qualitative” total state, according to Schmitt. This “qualitative” total state would be capable of depoliticizing society given its strength to intervene politically in the class struggle to eliminate the forces of sedition, thus freeing the economy from its alleged social barriers.19 Schmitt does not promote a planned state, but rather a state capable of guaranteeing authoritarian intervention in the political field and thus providing the economy the freedom to operate autonomously. This notion was extremely

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present among German intellectuals in the late twenties and early thirties and was fundamental in forming Hayek’s political perspective.20 DRAWING PEOPLE But this vision of the state could never be realized without adding another dimension to the process of social intervention—a dimension of a deeply psychological design. Here we refer to the internalization of psychological predispositions aiming to produce a type of relation—with oneself, with others, and with the world—guided by the generalization of business principles of performance, investment, profitability, and positioning. In this way, the model of free enterprise could be fixed in the hearts and souls of individuals. This psychological shift could only be realized through the generalized repetition of moral exhortations leading us to understand all resistance to such corporate redescription of life as a moral fault, as a refusal to be an “adult in the room” and to possess the courage to face the risk of forging one’s own path. This entrepreneurial ideal of the self was the necessary psychic result of the neoliberal strategy of building a “formalization of society based on the model of enterprise,”21 allowing managerial logic to be used as an economic tribunal against public power. This “extension and dissemination of market values ​​to social policy and to all institutions”22 is, of course, fundamental to neoliberalism. As we know, this generalization of the enterprise model within the social body opened the door for individuals to understand themselves as “entrepreneurs of the self.” These subjects define the rationality of their actions using the logic of investments and return on “capital”23 and understand their emotions as the products of their ability to cultivate “emotional intelligence”24 and optimize their affective skills. It also opens a space for the “business rationalization of desire,”25 a normative ground for the internalization of dynamics of surveillance and control based on constant self-assessment using criteria derived from business administration. This total retranslation of the general dimensions of internal and intersubjective relations into an economic rationality based on the “rational calculation” of costs and benefits produced a new interface between the government and individual, creating much more psychically rooted modes of governance. We should also note that this internalization of a self-entrepreneurial ideal was only possible because the capitalist enterprise itself had gradually modified its disciplinary structures since the end of the 1920s. The brutality of the Taylorist management model of time and movement, as well as the impersonality of the Weberian bureaucratic model had gradually given way to a “humanist” model. The success of this model was largely the result of

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the acceptance of Elton Mayo’s pioneering work, grounded in the psychology of motivational engineering in which “cooperation,” “communication” and “recognition” became devices for optimizing productivity. This “humanization” of the capitalist enterprise, with its terminology somewhere between administration and psychology, struck a compromise between management techniques and therapeutic intervention, allowing an affective mobilization within the world of labor that led to “mix the market’s repertoires with the languages ​​of the self.”26 Management of labor relations was “psychologized” so much that the clinical techniques of therapeutic intervention began to obey, in an increasingly evident way, standards of management assessment derived from the business world. The concepts of defined structures, management of “human capital,” “emotional intelligence,” and performance optimization derived from the Human Resources departments of large companies had taken their place in the therapist’s office. We were no longer only considering ourselves “self-entrepreneurs” but also making this form of social organization the grounds for a new definition of psychological normality. In this sense, anything contradicting such an order could only be seen as the expression of some form of pathology. Pathologizing criticism of the neoliberal order, then, was naturally the next step. It should also be noted that this generalization of the model of enterprise is also a description of hegemonic forms of violence within social life. The company is not just the expression of a form of economic rationality—it is the expression of a form of violence. Business competition is not a game of cricket, but a relationship based on the absence of solidarity (seen as an obstacle to the functioning of the selective capacity of progress), the cynicism of a false “fair competition” (allowing continuous flexibility of norms, bribery, corruption and cartels), colonial exploitation of the underprivileged, and the final monopolistic objective. This violence calls for political justification. To do so, it must consolidate itself in a type of social life in which every expression of general solidarity must be destroyed, the fear of the other is heightened to the maximum, and colonial exploitation is the rule. WHAT IS A CLINICAL CATEGORY? While the topic of the entrepreneur of the self has been widely debated in specialized literature, there is a less discussed point that we should stress: this creation of a hybrid discourse between economics and psychology as the grounds for social management regimes implies a complete reconfiguration of what we could call “the grammar of psychological suffering.” For to be truly internalized, such behavior cannot remain only a normative ideal—it should also reconfigure our way of understanding and classifying

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the processes of suffering. It is not enough to manage the center, we need to know how to manage the margins, to configure the possible ways of departing from the norm. Let us first remember that socioeconomic models are not only propositions regarding the way economic systems of production and consumption work, but rather, they must also determine the configuration of their rational agents, thereby defining a set of behaviors, modes of assessment and justifications to be internalized. Such models cannot be abstracted from the production of a psychology, that is, an anthropological figure, shared by and regulating all individuals seeking social recognition. Such models define patterns of individuation based on the rationality they seek to achieve. Within these standards, we find deeply normative systems of behavior, emotions, and forms of suffering. In this sense, we can say that socioeconomic models are models of government and social management of subjectivities which cannot be understood without their capacity to establish subjective behaviors and modes of self-regulation. They cannot be elucidated without the management of an inherent psychology. This means that one does not suffer the same way inside and outside neoliberalism. Such change implies the elimination of dynamic dimensions of the disease—for psychological suffering has a dimension of expression of refusal and revolt against the social system of norms. This revolt can be expressed in the three dimensions of what we commonly understand by forms of life, namely: desire, language, and labor. Neoliberal social discipline must eliminate the dimension of revolt that is expressed in psychic suffering, and thus must completely reconstruct what can be termed the “social grammar of suffering.” It is not by chance that the rise of neoliberalism in the seventies is followed by a brutal change in the forms of description and categorization of psychological suffering. This modification was consolidated through the advent of the DSM III in the late seventies: a psychiatry manual that represented a deep break with a language of social suffering that, until then, was becoming increasingly aware of the conflictual dimension of the processes of socialization proper to capitalist society. Some people adhere to what we might call a “redemptive description” of the development of science in general and psychiatry in particular. Such descriptions initially defend some form of “technological leap” driving decisive changes in the field of a determined science. These modifications would place such knowledge in a process of specular adjustment to the world, that is, of a realistic representation of the world outside of us, as if the sciences were destined to move ever closer to becoming true mirrors of nature. In the case of psychiatry and clinical psychology, such a technological leap would be exemplified by the development of pharmacology during the fifties.

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We mustn’t forget, however, the vast literature highlighting what we could call “the non-realistic nature” of concepts at work in the knowledge specific to clinical psychology.27 Usually, such research aims to show that we are facing problems that go beyond strictly epistemological issues by analyzing the value system present in modalities of clinical psychological intervention, as well as its impact on the production of objects that it seeks to describe. We must thus ask ourselves if the guidelines of the hegemonic perspectives on clinical intervention are value-neutral. If not, we must consider whether the values guiding clinical treatment are, in reality, the products of systems of normative discourses derived from fields outside therapeutic practice such as, for example, culture, morals, aesthetics, politics, and economic rationality. In these cases, it is a question not of considering clinical issues in isolation, but of reinscribing them within the value systems ​​inherent to the various spheres of social life. The logical consequence of such a view is the understanding that clinical categories are not natural kinds, but technologies of psychological intervention based on values. Put differently, the configuration and boundaries of clinical categories are not the result of the identification of natural differential predicates accessible in a field independent of the structure of language. On the contrary, they result from the technologies we have developed to produce psychological changes based on values ​​that we seek to implement. Clinical categories are not descriptive structures, but performative processes. This is the consequence of accepting the perspective of “dynamic nominalism,” or the idea that the field of clinical psychological intervention is enabled by the establishment of categories of classification with performative force. This force is capable of retroactively organizing phenomena within descriptive categories that serve not only as meaning-producing pictures for the singular experiences of suffering, but also to govern the interpretation and diagnosis of subsequent affects—a retroactive performance process termed the “looping effect.” In this sense, let us remember Ian Hacking, for whom a mental pathology does not so much describe a natural kind, as perhaps it would in the case of an organic disease such as cancer or Parkinson’s disease, but rather performatively creates a new situation in which subjects see themselves inserted.28 We should accept that clinical categories of psychological suffering are objects of reflexive and discursive elaboration by the subjects that they aim to describe, capable of producing a significant level of reorientation of actions and behaviors, both consciously and subconsciously. In this sense, classifications of psychological distress are not “indifferent,” as they are when used to describe phenomena of the physical world, but “interactive”—there is an interaction between categories and objects through self-reflection, resulting in a modification of the objects. Finally, as the current foundation of clinical psychological intervention is pharmacological,

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the configuration of the categories of diagnosis will tend to conform to the spectrum of action of the drug in question. A NEW SOCIAL GRAMMAR OF SUFFERING In deepening our analysis of the present landscape of clinical psychological intervention, we are faced with chronological data that deserves attention. The development of neuroleptics, which will have fundamental effects in the treatment of psychic suffering, began with the synthesis of chlorpromazine, in the early fifties, developed mainly as a result of research by Henri Laborit, Jean Delay and Pierre Deniker. A deeper shift in clinical categories, however, will only happen in 1980, with the development of the DSM III. Then two important facts occur, which may help illuminate our understanding of modern psychiatry more than the theory of the impact of the technological leap. The first is the discussion regarding the role of the psychiatric hospital— following the end of World War II, psychiatric knowledge will experience increasingly strong movements questioning its own nature: what is a psychiatric hospital and to what extent is it not a solution, but part of the problem? Shouldn’t the doctor-patient relationship, in this case, also be understood as a power relation that simply reproduces the power dynamics found in other spheres of social life? Is there not a fundamental dimension of revolt in madness, that should be addressed in its productive force and potential for insight into the limits of our way of life? If we accept psychic life as inseparable from social life, with its internalized norms, ideals, and principles of authority, why not examine social processes as a cause of psychic suffering that drives subjects to psychiatric hospitals and medicine cabinets? For many today, these issues seem to be immersed in a certain romanticism and naivety, and are little discussed in our medical departments. Between the fifties and seventies, however, they had an impressive impact on the development of psychiatry. Movements like the anti-psychiatry of David Cooper, Robert Laing, and Thomas Szasz, the institutional analysis of François Tosquelles of the group La Borde, the work of Enrique Pichon-Rivière, or the reforms proposed to the Italian asylum system by Franco Basaglia all seemed to point to an emerging reconsideration the social value of madness and the relationship between normality and pathology. This, in turn, implied a radical change to treatment approaches: between 1950 and 1974 the number of subjects admitted to psychiatric hospitals dropped by half (from 500,000 to 215,000).29 The focus on the therapeutic relationship and its power structures was placed squarely in the center of treatment, as opposed to pharmacological treatment of symptoms. The criticism of the social place of psychiatry seemed to lead to a certain “crisis of legitimacy” that echoed a broader recognition of

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the fragility of the normative framework of life under capitalism. The release of madness from forms of internment and disciplinary intervention was seen to be fundamental to a society seeking emancipation from the regular patterns of material reproduction of life. The second phenomenon seen in the clinical fields of psychology and psychiatry during this time period, is the prevalence of psychoanalysis as a fundamental horizon of clinical reference. In the early sixties, more than half of the psychiatric department heads at North American universities were members of psychoanalytic societies. The psychoanalytic notion of psychological suffering as an expression of systems of conflicts and contradictions in the processes of socialization and individuation, conflicts that often showed the contradictory, problematic and traumatic nature of our institutions and structures (such as family, marriage, work, school, religion, sexuality) was a decisive element not only for understanding psychological suffering, but also for mobilizing critical horizons regarding the costs of our process of civilization and the problems immanent to our forms of life under capitalist society. Let us keep these two phenomena in mind when seeking to better understand what was at stake in the shift in the classification and treatment of mental illness and psychological suffering in the late seventies. The field of clinical psychology was increasingly assuming the relationship between contradictions immanent to the institutional structures of social life (family, hospital, state, school, among so many others) and psychological suffering—psychic life as a space for expressing the refusal to accept the normative frameworks that govern us. This insight has always been, and remains, politically explosive, as it leads to awareness of the need for deep institutional transformation in order to reduce psychological and social suffering. The official reason for the shift toward the categorization system of the DSM III regards these changes as the result of the quest for a classification framework with axiological neutrality. This would help resolve certain conflicts of interpretations present in in the field of psychological diagnoses until then (belying the difficulty of forging a unified framework that would allow practitioners to reach the same diagnostic conclusions). In this sense, it would be best to eliminate any etiological reflection in favor of a description of symptoms.30 In fact, we can say that the “neutrality” of the DSM III sought to fulfill three ambitions: “to overcome ideological cleavages through science, to place in brackets the etiological question to focus on clinical descriptions, to reform the diagnostic vocabulary while avoiding inferences as much as possible.”31 The result was a complete reconfiguration of the description of psychological suffering. The results of this reconfiguration are manifold: the disappearance of neuroses as the main comprehensive framework for determining psychic suffering, the individualization of depression (escaping the

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mania-depression structure) and its rise as the main framework for describing psychic suffering, the rise of narcissistic and borderline disorders, and the elevation of schizophrenia to the condition of “unitary psychosis.” These structural changes, however, were far from being value-neutral. In fact, this value neutrality would prove an impossible task since the moment mental disorders were characterized as “significantly increased risk of suffering, death, pain, disability or significant loss of freedom”32 (among other descriptions). Until this moment, “freedom” was never used as a clinical concept, as it was a concept loaded with philosophical resonance and an extreme point of contention among contradictory worldviews. It is not difficult to see which “freedom” appears here as a regulatory and disciplinary horizon. Even though such a definition no longer appears in the DSM V, it is still assumed when mental disorder is characterized as a syndrome responsible for clinically significant disorders in individual cognition, emotional regulation and behavior that would reflect dysfunction in biological, psychological or developmental processes.33 We must, of course, consider the disciplinary nature of a “freedom” that presupposes clinically observable patterns of emotional regulation, cognition, and development. It is clear that such patterns don’t have precise biological markers and that they never will. Would it be possible to find biological markers, for example, for histrionic personality disorder? Its diagnostic criteria (based on the notion of emotional deregulation) are, among others, “discomfort in situations in which he or she is not the center of attention,” “constant use of physical appearance to draw attention to oneself,” “shows self-dramatism, theatricality and exaggerated expression of emotions.” Such criteria cannot be evaluated as an expression of specific biological markers, but seen as behaviors of refusal, conscious or not, to socialization patterns that are quite vague and undefined. In discussing an “exaggerated expression of emotions,” one must ask where an “adequate standard” of emotions would be found, if not in the subjectivity of the doctor. THE END OF NEUROSIS Let us quickly note what is at stake in one of the main changes in the grammar of psychic suffering, namely, the disappearance of neuroses. This change will radically transform the way we describe how we suffer. This phenomenon is linked to the hegemony of depression as a diagnosis. If we look up the psychiatric definition of depressive disorders, we will find descriptions such as the following: “the common characteristic of all these disorders is the presence of mood linked to feelings of sadness, emptying, irritation accompanied by somatic and cognitive changes that significantly

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affect the individual’s ability to function.”34 Such disorders, described without considering any etiological perspective, should last at least two weeks and involve changes in affects, cognition, and neurovegetative functions. Until 1994, the DSM recognized only two types of depressive disorders: major depressive disorder and dysthymia, both understood as forms of particularized affective disorders since 1980 (the year of publication of DSM III), when clinical attention to depression experienced substantial growth. Until then, depression was the object of a process through which it ceased to be described as either one pole of manic-depressive bipolar disorder (as was the case in Kraepelin in the late nineteenth century) or in the general picture of neuroses. With the publication of DSM II, in 1968, it appears as “depressive neurosis,” ceasing to be understood as a neurotic depressive reaction as a general term for non-bipolar depression (this when it was not characterized as “endogenous depression,” meaning caused by internal factors rather than exogenous causes). Finally, since the end of the seventies, depression would gain independence from the now retired diagnosis of neuroses. Such dissociation between depression and neurosis, with its psychoanalytic heritage, is not a mere nosographic change occurring, coincidentally, with the neoliberal turn. In fact, neurosis and depression are radically different models of pathologies—one replaces the other. As Alain Ehrenberg has clearly seen35, depression can only appear as a central problem when the disciplinary model of behavior management gives way to rules that incite everyone to personal initiative, to the obligation to be her or himself. For, contrary to the Freudian model of neuroses, where psychological suffering revolves around the consequences of internalizing a law that socializes desire by organizing behavior from the conflict between the allowed/prohibited polarity, in depression, such socialization would organize behavior from a polarity much more complex and flexible, namely the possible/impossible polarity. The moral prohibition arising from the normative demands of socialization gives rise to a situation of flexible laws and of anomie management that no longer judges actions according to their social permissibility, but rather according to the individual criteria of performance. Thus, the individual is confronted with a pathology of insufficiency and dysfunctionality of their own action, instead of one of prohibition and law. If neurosis is a drama of guilt linked to the perpetual conflict between normativity and psychic life, a drama that can only be dealt with by understanding the contradictions inherent in the “normal” functioning of the law, depression appears as an tragedy of insufficiency and inhibition. There can be no clinical intervention in neurosis without the unveiling of what psychoanalysts like Lacan called the “lack in the Other”—in other words, the neurotic conflict can only be overcome once the inadequacy to the norm is not felt as that of the subject, but rather as the impossibility of the institutional structure to give a full account of the singular nature of desire.

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None of this complexity is present in the current clinical diagnosis of depression. A technology of clinical intervention able to elucidate links between psychological and social conflicts is lost, and replaced by another, entirely different form of intervention that eliminates any discussion of the social dimension of suffering. Neoliberalism has thus given rise to a new form of suffering by eliminating the awareness of social violence from our understanding of psychological suffering. NOTES 1. The author would like to thank Fabian Freyehagen and Timo Jütten for the collective work on this topic during a stay at the University of Essex in July 2019. 2. See Varoufakis, Adults in the Room. 3. See Blyth, Austerity, 152. 4. Stuart Mill, “On the Definition of Political Economy and the Method of Investigation Proper to It” in: Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, 145. 5. See Dupuy, L’avenir de l’économie. 6. Apud. Mirowski, The Road from Mont Pelerin, 25. 7. Mises, Liberalismo. 8. See Foucault, The Order of Things. 9. See, for example: Fassin and Rechtman, L’empire du traumatisme; Illouz, O amor nos tempos do capitalismo. 10. For a discussion of the symposium, see Audier and Reinhoudt, The Walter Lippmann Colloquium. 11. This mouvement was clearly described in: Ehrenberg, La fatige d’être soi. 12. See Chamayou, La société ingouvernable. 13. Hayek, Interview to El Mercurio. 14. 2015, Carola Fuentes and Rafael Valdeavellano. 15. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 4. 16. “This weakness of the government of an omnipotent democracy was very clearly seen by the extraordinary German student of politics, Carl Schmitt, who in the 1920s probably understood the character of the developing form of government better than most people and then regularly came down on what to me appears both morally and intellectually the wrong side” (Hayek, Law, legislation and liberty, 194). 17. Marcuse, Cultura e sociedade, 61. 18. See Schmitt, “Starker Staat und gesunde Wirtschaft. Ein Vortrag für Wirtschaftsführen.” In Volk und Reich Politische Monatshefte für das junge Deutschland, 81–94. 19. “This Total Qualitative State is a Strong State, total in the sense of quality and energy (‘total im Sinne der Qualität und der Energie’), in addition to being authoritarian in the political domain, in order to decide on the distinction between friend and enemy, and guarantor of individual freedom in the context of the economy ” (Bercovici, Entre o Estado Total e o Estado Social).

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20. See, for example, the distinction between total state and authoritarian state in Ziegler, Autoritärer oder totaler Staat. Here, the authoritarian state appears as a “neutral state,” depoliticized, capable of imposing itself despite the multiple interests of classes and corporations. 21. Foucault, La naissance de la biopolitique, 222. 22. Brown, Les habits neufs de la politique mondiale, 50. 23. See the notion of “human capital” in: Becker, Human Capital. 24. See Goleman, Emotional Intelligence. 25. Dardot and Laval, La nouvelle raison do monde, 440. 26. Illouz, O amor no tempo do capitalismo, 154. 27. See first: Foucault, Histoire de la folie. For the contemporary debate, see: Kincald and Sullivan, Classifying psychopathology; Cooper, Classifying madness; and Murphy, Psychiatry in the scientific image. 28. “A kind of person came into being at the same time as the kind itself was being invented. In some cases, that is, our classifications and our classes conspire to emerge hand in hand, each egging the other on” (Hacking, Historical ontology, 106). 29. Demazeux, Qu’est-ce que le DSM?, 27. 30. The model of this new classification system was developed first by Feighner, “Diagnostic criteria for use in psychiatric research.” 31. Demazeux, Qu’est-ce que le DSM?, 156. 32. American Psychiatric Association. DSM IV, 29. 33. American Psychiatric Association, DSM V, 20. 34. American Psychiatric Association, DSM V, 155. 35. Ehrenberg, La fatigue d’être soi, 10.

REFERENCES Adorno, Theodor. Ensaios de psicologia social e psicanálise. São Paulo: Unesp, 2016. ———. Soziologische Schriften. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972. American Psychiatric Association. Manual Diagnóstico e Estatístico de Transtornos Mentais IV (DSM IV). Porto Alegre: Artmed, 2002. ———. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V (DSM V), Arlington: APA, 2013. Audier, Serge, and Urgen Reinhoudt. The Walter Lippmann Colloquium: The Birth of Neo-Liberalism. London: Palgrave, 2018. Becker, Gary. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with a Special Reference to Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Bercovici, Gilberto. Entre o Estado Total e o Estado Social (tese de livre-docência). São Paulo: USP, 2003. Blyth, Mark. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Brown, Wendy. Les habits neufs de la politique mondiale: néolibéralisme et néo-conservatisme. Paris: Les Prairies Ordinaires, 2007.

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Chamayou, Grégoire. La société ingouvernable. Paris: La fabrique, 2019. Cooper, David. Psiquiatria e antipsiquiatria. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1982. Cooper, Melinda. Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. Cooper, Rachel. Classifying Madness: A Philosophical Examination of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. New York: Springer, 2005. Dardot, Pierre and Laval, Christian. La nouvelle raison du monde. Paris: La découverte, 2010. Davidson, Arnold. The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Demazeux, Steeves. Qu’est-ce que le DSM? Genèse et transformations de la bible américaine de la psychiatrie. Paris: Ithaque, 2013. Dunker, Christian, Safatle, Vladimir and Silva Júnior, Nelson. Patologias do social: arqueologias do sofrimento psíquico. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2018. Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. L’avenir de l’économie. Paris: Flammarion, 2014. Ehrenberg, Alain. La fatige d’être soi: dépression et société. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2000. Fassin, Didier and Rechtman, Richard. L’empire du traumatisme: enquête sur la condition de victime. Paris: Flammarion, 2011. Feighner, John, et all.. “Diagnostic criteria for use in psychiatric research.” Archive Gen Psychiatry, vol. 26, jan. 1972. Foucault, Michel. Histoire de la folie. Paris: Gallimard, 1962. ———. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Seuil, 1966. ———. The Order of Things. New York: Routledge, 2002. ———. La naissance de la biopolitique. Paris: Seuil, 2010. Gandesha, Samir. “Identifying with the aggressor: from authoritarian to neoliberal personality.” Constellations, 18, pp. 1–18. Goleman, Daniel. Inteligência emocional. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 1996. Hacking, Ian. Historical Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Hayek, Frederik. Law, legislation and liberty vol III. New York: Routledge, 1982. ———, “Extracts from an Interview with Friedrich von Hayek (El Mercurio, Chile, 1981),” Punto de vista económico, Accesed September 20, https:​//​puntodevistaeconomico​.com​/2016​/12​/21​/extracts​-from​-an​-interview​-with​-friedrich​-von​-hayek​-el​ -mercurio​-chile​-1981​/. Illouz, Eva. O amor nos tempos do capitalismo. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2011. Kincald, Harold, and Jacqueline Sullivan: Classifying Psychopathology: Mental Kinds and Natural Kinds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. Marcuse, Herbert. Cultura e sociedade, vol. I. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1997. Marx, Karl. Manuscritos econômicos-filosóficos. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2007. Mill, John Stuart, “On the Definition of Political Economy and the Method of Investigation Proper to It” (1836). In: Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844), 3d ed., London: Longmans Green & Co., 1877. Mirowski, Phillip et Plehwe, Dieter (org.). The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Mises, Ludwig von. Liberalismo—segundo a tradição clássica. São Paulo: Instuto Von Mises, 2010.

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Murphy, Dominic. Psychiatry in the Scientific Image. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Schmitt, Carl. “Starker Staat und gesunde Wirtschaft. Ein Vortrag für Wirtschaftsführen.” In Volk und Reich Politische Monatshefte für das junge Deutschland, 1933, tomo 1, caderno 2, pp. 81–94. Varoufakis, Yannis. Adults in the Room: my Battle with the European and the American Deep Establishment. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997. Weber, Max. A ética protestante e o ‘espírito’ do capitalismo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2004. Zachar, Peter. A metaphysics of psychopathology. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 2014. Ziegler, Heinz. Autoritärer oder totaler Staat. Tübigen: Mohr, 1932.

Chapter 4

Neoliberalism and Psychological Suffering The Political Potential of Discontent1 Rodrigo Castro Orellana

In his famous 1956 conference What Is Psychology, Canguilhem claimed that psychology faced the dilemma of whether to go up or down Rue Saint-Jacques after leaving the Sorbonne: “if one ascends, one approaches the Pantheon, the conservatory of great men; but if one descends, one heads directly to the Police Department.”2 In his statement he expressed his doubts regarding the aim of psychology: whether psychology seeks to build a noble body of knowledge about humankind or whether it aims to create an instrument for disciplining individuals. When Canguilhem staked this claim in the mid-twentieth century, there was a certain degree of uncertainty. Today, however, after nearly two centuries of the mass use of psychology in society, the answer is clear: psychology has been, and continues to be, intimately linked to the governing mechanisms of modernity. If we understand governing to mean the discourses and practices aimed at guiding behavior, psychology’s expert knowledge has undoubtedly played a decisive political role in this regard. Foucault highlighted this in his analyses of psychiatric power in the nineteenth century, in which he identified a process of individualization increasingly focused on delimiting the difference between the normal and abnormal.3 This process involved incorporating and distributing multiple psychological techniques and therapeutic concepts throughout society. These techniques and concepts eventually exceeded the scope of disease itself to operate within the broad space of individuals’ experience with themselves and with others. Psychology thus molded the concept of the individual, on the individuals’ understanding of their inner psychological 65

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self, underpinned by the aspiration for autonomy and self-realization. The individual was ascribed to an order of predictable, and therefore measurable, interests and behaviors. This psychologization of society has made it possible for the specific mechanisms of neoliberalism to emerge—without the expansion of psy-knowledge, power strategies, whose main content lies in the governance of subjects through freedom, would have been unable to function. This psychological expertise enabled creating the social and subjective mediations that allowed the entirety of life to be understood in terms of the permanent demand for choice. In other words, the psy-sciences produced the neoliberal regime of truth whose model of subjectivity is expressed in the imperative that “we are obliged to be free.”4 Several factors enabled this situation, including media messaging promoting a kind of rationality encouraging the values of selffulfillment, individualist happiness, and personal satisfaction, which can be observed, for example, in TV talk shows, the press, social media, and selfhelp literature. This psychological discourse conceives existence as a permanent task of self-construction, in which any difficulty can be overcome within the space of self-management, underpins the discourse of family, teachers, managers, therapists, social workers and more. In this way, subjects have learned to conceive of themselves in accordance with the parameters of the psy-disciplines. This experience of the self enables the functioning of the power mechanisms characteristic of advanced liberal societies—subjects self-govern by demanding of themselves a happiness that depends exclusively on their own personal endeavors. Slogans such as “Do it yourself,” “If you want it, you can do it,” “Your success depends only on you,” and so on, are the hallmarks of this hegemonic rationality. This does not imply, however, that the political aspects of human life have shifted in order to consolidate a retreat to an individualistic sphere that rejects the social aspects of life. The psy-discourses decisively contribute to a metamorphosis in the ways that society is conducted by their integration into different political management frameworks. These discourses form part of a type of governmentality5 whose main output consists of privatizing or personalizing the structural contradictions of the capitalist order and rendering its constituent conflicts invisible. Any negativity, failure, waste, or resistance is turned into a personal problem, into something that only fits within the territory of individual self-management. As Fisher notes, all “discontent is individualized and internalized”6—suffering no longer circulates openly through the world but is relegated to our inner lives. This radicalizes the “psy-requirements” by attributing responsibility to the subject, leading the voluntarism of the neoliberal individual toward a magical self-representation of their capacities to change the world and to the belief that everything depends completely on the “self.”7

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My aim in this article is to evaluate the psychological effects of the characteristic logic of neoliberal societies. I suspect that the privatization of contradictions leads the subject toward extraordinarily complex experiences of emotional suffering that coexist with the imperatives of self-referential happiness and individualistic enjoyment. This link between emotional pain and the demand for autopoietic well-being is not a contradiction, but rather a dominant trait within the current capitalist form of life. I will seek to explain this, in the final part of the article, through an analysis of Mark Fisher’s hypothesis on the need to politicize the areas of psychological and emotional fracture that underpin contemporary capitalist realism. First, however, we must analyze the problematic concept of neoliberalism so as to identify the specific study methodology that provides the foundation for this research. THE METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEM I will use the term neoliberalism to describe a form of material functioning that characterizes the power strategies within contemporary capitalism. In that sense, I do not use this term only to refer to a set of economic or political doctrines. While there is undoubtedly a connection between the ideas of neoliberal authors and the specific tactical actions of existing powers, there are also important divergences. Certain discursive elements characteristic of neoliberalism, have managed to circulate socially, such as, for example, the imperative of competition. On the contrary, other aspects offer us a perspective about the significant divide that exists between neoliberal ideas and the empirical reality of neoliberal powers. In this sense, the challenge laid down by neoliberal theory against the state and its actions designed to ensure the welfare of its citizens its illustrative. Today we can observe a growing subordination of the latter’s aims to the logic of the market, which now acts to prop up a variety of resources of traditional disciplinary power. However, to the extent that my analysis does not reduce neoliberalism to a discursive production that formalizes the world, it also does not hypothesize that we are faced with a type of global power or paradigm that articulates the domination characteristic of our time. We need to stop conceiving of neoliberalism as a totality or a set of perfectly coherent signs or practices. There is not, as Laval and Dardot believe, a “universal reason”8 that underpins the different claims of society with a unilateral logic, turning them into moments of a single system, without autonomous spheres because they would only reproduce and confirm such rationality. On the contrary, what I refer to as neoliberalism is formed by a diverse array of mechanisms that operate in differentiated social strata and that do not necessarily have a harmonious relationship among themselves.

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In any case, this is not to deny the contributions of studies on neoliberal thought, or to completely reject the inputs of an interpretation that conceives neoliberalism as a totalizing system that completely determines our life. My intention is to attempt a different methodological focus centered on the microphysical dimension of strategies which allows us to register the multifaceted, ambiguous, and even contradictory nature that characterizes these mechanisms. This fragmentary nature of neoliberal powers, distributed across differentiated social strata, would allow us to explain the extraordinary potential and political efficacy of its work in molding subjectivity. It can also help us to understand the complex relationships between the practices of democratic government, anchored in personal freedom, and the procedures of subjectivation that necessarily involve a limitation of experience and a form of social control. The configuration of these power relationships and their multiple mechanisms also guarantees an automatism of subjection and the independence of these mechanisms from any claim that aims to be identified as a center or core. We could state, following Rose’s analysis, that “political authorities ‘act at a distance’ upon the aims and aspirations of individuals.”9 In this sense, each mechanism constitutes a modality of indirect governance10 because it does not deploy any explicit coercion on the subject, but rather inserts the subject into a conditioned environment with specific interests, objectives, and values. The individual is thus cast into a strictly organized spatial environment where certain types of behaviors are reinforced and promoted, while others are prohibited or disqualified. For this reason, neoliberal mechanisms can be described as “atmospheres” that establish specific rules of subsistence: the primacy of individuality, the value of competition, the suppression of solidarity between subjects, and so on. Therefore, this involves understanding neoliberalism as a historical assemblage comprised of heterogeneous practices from disparate sources. This idea of assemblage comes from the genealogical studies on liberal governmentality, with evident Foucauldian influence, developed by Rose.11 This notion allows us to observe how subjects are placed in technical modes of spatial organization within which they carry out their modes of life, in such a way that they activate certain repertoires of behaviors and modalities of the individual’s relationship with their inner self. Each mechanism constitutes a subjectivation machine in which a body is connected and linked to vocabularies, opinions, ideas, techniques, instruments, objects, protocols to organize time, spatial arrangement, and so on. Contemporary subjectivation is thus portrayed as a hybrid product in which bodies and neoliberal artifacts of power combine at a microphysical level. In this constellation of mechanisms, it is impossible to identify a center or an agent (whether elite or oligarchic), a single rationality from which power relationships emanate, or

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a mechanism with a privileged and dominant position regarding the others.12 Each of the pieces of this assemblage contains specific power effects. There is no unique, widespread project because neoliberalism is characterized by its polymorphous nature, which also explains its extraordinary capacity to adapt to alternative political realities. In fact, each mechanism is the result of its own particular historicity, which creates permanent variations and contradictions within the assemblage. There are mechanisms linked to the governmental management of space, health, and the self. There may be mechanisms that share the goal of producing subjects as human capital, but technology focused on consumption is not the same as technology anchored in debt or precariousness. We could even say that in our societies, the idea of happiness itself has become a mechanism that organizes the self-representation of one’s own existence and organizes the indicators of a fulfilled life. Happiness can be used as a disciplinary technique of organizing experience and behaviors13 that underpins a variety of neoliberal mechanisms, and is decisive in evaluating the effects and consequences of the neoliberal celebration of the “self.” Lastly, we should note that every mechanism always contains a tactic referred to the object toward which the strategy is directed. This “impact zone” is always the living materiality of a body that somehow responds to or resists against the environmental organization into which it is inserted. The mechanism is created as a solution to an antagonistic relationship and is shifted or modified when its purposes of pacification fail. My hypothesis, thus, points in the direction of analyzing the psychological suffering of contemporary subjects as an embryonic expression of an affective counter-behavior that accompanies the function of these neoliberal mechanisms. In this last sense, the methodological approach aspires to open a horizon for new political possibilities based on a change in the form of analyzing and studying the neoliberal phenomenon. PSYCHOLOGICAL SUFFERING AND THE IMPERATIVE OF HAPPINESS The figures are overwhelming. In 2006, more than 30 million depressants were dispensed in the United States. A decade later, this figure shot up to nearly 65 million,14 meaning that around 15 percent of the US population over twelve years old has consumed some type of psychopharmaceutical drug.15 We live in an age when the use of medications to fight depression, anxiety, and stress has exploded. This wave of psychopharmacological consumption has not led to a reduction in psychological diseases or disorders, but rather the contrary.16 This phenomenon should not surprise us, given the

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fact that psychopharmaceuticals do not aim to cure psychological diseases or even substantively reduce individual discomfort. Psychopharmaceuticals are, rather, a mechanism of control that operates on subjects with the goal of stabilizing them and allowing them to function at a certain level in society. These drugs are intended to act on the materiality of suffering, although it is not at all evident that this occurs with the purpose of effectively decreasing people’s pain. Whitaker has clearly demonstrated the harmful effects of many medications in that they reinforce the permanent “psychiatrization” of patients and subject them to a true pharmacological totalitarianism. Among other causes, this is the result of a scientific paradigm that reduces the nature of mental illness and personality disorders to a consequence that arises from complex chemical imbalances located in the brain. This biological explanation suffers from important limitations because as it cannot offer anything more than a formula providing palliative care for the symptoms. The causes of this suffering thus remain hidden and removed from any understanding that goes beyond the centrality of the individual and their organic materiality. It is evident, however, that the exponential increase in psychological suffering is directly related to people’s capacity to respond to the demands that arise from the social imperative of happiness that dominates our present. Hence it is important to understand the ideal of happiness that neoliberalism implies. This is only possible through observation of the way our societies have articulated the forms of individualization and work dynamics; between the desire to maximize the self and the management of individual capacities and resources. The demand of self-realization that the subject takes on as a task is strictly linked to the suitable administration of their personal capital (education, knowledge, intellectual or physical talents, social or affective skills, etc.) and the acquisition of more pieces of the economic pie. In this context, work is no longer seen as an unpleasant activity that must be done in order to have our own free time—in other words, a necessary evil. Now, on the contrary, we achieve excellence, and become satisfied “not in spite of work, but precisely through it.”17 The full realization of the self, which is recognized as “happiness,” has become completely identified with work. Fisher considers that this happens in absolute terms, to such an extent that work activity “no longer opposes subjectivity.”18 Because “there is no time outside of work,” you are your work—there is no exterior space outside the productive space where one can materialize their own self-actualization. This axiom remains valid even for those unemployed, as searching for a job has itself become a task that must be managed. This is what the concept of employability entails: the sum of what a subject is willing to do and the attributes that they should develop to be potentially employable. This means that individuals must manage their own condition of unemployment by improving their personal employability metrics through language courses, training

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workshops, learning to write a CV, and so on. This imperative requires investing in one’s own subjective skills in order to transform into someone more successful in the global job market. The neoliberal identification of happiness with work is also highlighted by the demand for emotional bonds by seemingly every productive space today. It is increasingly unacceptable for anyone to appear unhappy at work—whether you are unhappy or not is immaterial—you mustn’t show it.19 Productive systems reinforce this obligated happiness on their employees through satisfaction surveys that allow customers to negatively assess if they believe employees seem sad. For Fisher, this is the societal implementation of a true emotional self-exploitation that leads the individual to publicly “over-represent” their emotional states:20 even if you are truly happy at work, you must add an inventive plus so that no one can question the sincerity of your happiness. Emotions, therefore, enter into a logic of constant simulation requiring of the individual an exhausting effort to hide any pain. The problem, then, does not consist only of the fact that happiness is completely associated with the future result of productive activity, but rather that performance itself emerges as that which would provide happiness. This principle thus determines the imperative of self-realization which dominates the workplace. However, the happiness imperative is not only applicable in the workplace. This strategy underpins human interactions in general, the totality of media, and every realm where neoliberal powers are deployed. This transversal nature of the happiness mechanism is seen in a series of discourses and practices that aim to model or restrain our ways of living. Happiness, as Sarah Ahmed observes, is used as a tool that enables the “reorientation of individual desire” toward an idea or an aspiration of what life should be in collective terms.21 The apparent proliferation of lifestyles within neoliberalism is thus seen as an artifice that hides the homogeneous design of a single existential script that establishes appropriate lifestyles and goals. It is here where a tautological discourse of happiness can be seen: we must have an optimistic and positive attitude toward life, because that way things will end up better and we will be happier. Moreover, we are also told that this will impact the happiness of everyone around us.22 We must be happy, both for the sake of our own happiness and for the greater happiness. This dogmatism of spontaneous happiness is directly connected with what Smail names “magical voluntarism,”23 or the conviction that everything is possible as long as the subject truly wants it. This, of course, is one of the main imperatives of the logic of neoliberal power: its eagerness to reduce any obstacle or social conflict to a difficulty that belongs to the sphere of the individual’s self-management. The problem is not only that the possibility of being unhappy is denied and discarded, but also the dominant discourse that any misfortune depends exclusively on one’s own self. Fisher describes

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this as “psychological entrepreneurship” that considers a lack of success as a consequence of not having done “the necessary work to rebuild ourselves.”24 In this context, we have to highlight the enormous importance of the mechanism of the spectacle within neoliberal society. Mass media and advertising promote, reinforce and broadcast these discourses of “tautological optimism” and “magical voluntarism.” Above all, however, they clearly display the elements supposedly necessary for an existence deserving of the title of “happy.” The mechanism of the spectacle teaches an ideal of a fulfilled life linked to individual self-fulfillment, hedonistic enjoyment and money as the “perfect yardstick for measuring everything we consider important.”25 There is a communicational joyousness of existence that particularly impacts how subjects order their expectations and aspirations. As Bifo notes: “The communicative mechanism of advertising is based on the production of a sense of inadequacy and on the call for consumption that will allow us to become adequate and finally make real that happiness that escapes us.”26 This last aspect means that the imperative of happiness is deployed in an apparently paradoxical manner, where being happy seems both a simple act of will and an unattainable ideal. In reality, it is here where the coherence of the mechanism reaches its zenith, given that the inadequacy to live up to the ideal of happiness portrayed by the media is nothing more than the other side of the infinite demand for the individual to effectively manage themselves. This is one of the most sinister aspects of neoliberal happiness—the imposition of a permanent state of emergency in the administration of one’s self based on the conviction that all well-being, insofar as it depends on one’s self, can never be completely guaranteed. It is thus understood that being unhappy should be experienced as a source of shame, a burden that must be borne in silence, with no space for significant socialization. In social interaction per se, misfortune, frustration, and failure are discriminated against, forcing simulated behaviors that impede collective visibility of pain. While there is all the time in the world to discuss that which is considered “happy,” any misfortune or negative emotions must be quickly processed and discarded. This logic of the impermissibility of sadness also constitutes a fundamental factor necessary for the functioning of the mechanism of the spectacle. We must prevent others from expressing sadness, so that we can continue the show, in the same way that a newscast rapidly moves from a segment announcing the tragic death of human beings to the latest sports updates. Everything is so rigorously programmed and subjected to productive continuity that it accepts no interruption in the parade of happiness. However, this description of happiness as a mechanism implies that it functions as a power strategy—in other words, that there are political purposes in the enforced happiness of existence. These mainly consist of the privatization of suffering, whose objective is to transform the contradictions or conflicts

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that arise from structural aspects of society into problems that depend on the individual’s own self-management. Thus, “happiness erases all the signals that something is not working,”27 eliminating the signs of anything that exceeds the subject’s own space of action and decisions. The fundamental purpose of the mechanism of happiness consists in dissolving the realization that there are causes of suffering that have no relationship with individuality. Loneliness and Depression These neoliberal imperatives of self-realization and narcissistic enjoyment have manifold consequences. The first involves the destruction of any type of significant social interaction, contributing to an intensification of the feeling of loneliness and abandonment. Neoliberal mechanisms turn subjects’ work on improving themselves into the only thing that can guarantee happiness, giving the individual a monopoly over the causes of their own fulfillment or misfortune. It casts them out to a state of radical responsibility ultimately leads them to feel completely isolated. The demand to be concerned only with one’s own self eliminates the spaces of solidarity where happiness or suffering could become shared realities. As Han says: “the social dimension of pain is repressed and displaced,”28 while pain is exacerbated because it is relegated to the realm of intimacy. This does not imply that the effects of the entrepreneurial self-management of subjectivity are antisocial per se. Neoliberal mechanisms do not deny relationships with others, but rather reduce them to the logic of administrable personal capital. The self-realized and happy self  29 is expected to have a social efficacy, that is, the capacity to establish relationships with others in a competent and successful manner. This thus involves a production of social relationships underpinned by the principle of performance which serves to disintegrate solidarity.30 Here we can speak of a loss of significant interactions with others which would be capable of fracturing self-referentiality and creating the necessary conditions for a substantive modification of the competitive repertoire to which the subject is bound. Neoliberal mechanisms form a socially Darwinian world in which the individual is impelled to behave as an organism whose subsistence can only be guaranteed through competition and victory over others. This savage anthropology translates into a disproportionate self-discipline that places subjects in the extreme circumstance that everything depends on solely on themselves. Put differently, individuals do not ultimately possess anything in life aside from their own will. This lonely and isolated anthropology however, could never account for the historical achievements of human beings: years ago, Kropotkin showed that the key factor in human evolution was mutual aid and joint action among subjects.31 Furthermore, from a strictly psychological point of view, we must highlight

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the importance of trust in building self-esteem, something that can only be acquired through social interactions.32 We are thus facing two perverse effects of the neoliberalization of society. On the one hand is the counter-evolutionary energy of neoliberal mechanisms that lead to barbarity and, on the other, the intense promotion of the fallacy of self-transformation as something available to everyone. Regarding the latter effect, as noted by Smail, it is important to remember the psychological suffering of all who experience suffering impossible to overcome through personal effort.33 In Fisher’s words: “Individuals need to engage in collective practices that reverse the privatization of stress in neoliberalism.”34 Every sufferer of depression knows quite well that no matter how hard they try, they can’t change their situation alone. Healing, thus, requires a social fabric which neoliberal logic aims to fragment and destroy. Loneliness, in turn, is the main accelerator of psychological disorders. In his 1998 book The Weariness of the Self, Ehrenberg described depression as a disease of responsibility.35 We should add, however, that this attribution of responsibility is a characteristic tactic of the mechanisms of neoliberalism rather than a constituent property of subjectivity. This disorder arises from a strategy that imposes the idea that every aspiration and every problem must be resolved in the space of individual self-management. It is this privatization of contradictions that triggers unbalanced subjectivity, insofar as it renders the social dimension of conflicts invisible. Depression, therefore, constitutes the flipside of neoliberalism’s faith in individualistic omnipotence, as the result of individuals facing the inevitable reality of the scarcity of opportunities.36 In a society whose normative behavior is not governed by guilt and discipline, but rather by responsibility and initiative,37 it is logical that weariness should result from incessant personal self-demands, accompanied by a profound psychological fracture upon realizing that, in reality, nothing seems possible for the subject. The effectiveness of the imperative of self-regulation and joyfulness, thus, has its limits, given that no one can sustain indefinitely the belief that precariousness, poverty, unemployment, and sadness can be resolved exclusively by the individual’s action. This makes the analysis of depression highly important, as it represents cultural production of the highest order. Depression is the logical effect of a method of subjectivation that exhausts and distresses human beings insofar as they “undertake their march into the future relying only on themselves.”38 On this point we cannot overlook that this oscillating subjectivity between voluntarism and depression is closely akin to other structural aspects of the capitalist process. As Fisher suggests, the constant boom and bust cycles of capitalism have their own depressive logic with indicators of delirious optimism rapidly replaced by disillusionment and mistrust.39 In this sense, the

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neoliberal machine promotes moods of either manic happiness or depression, and even feeds on them. Neoliberal mechanisms produce aporetic existences that in turn sustain these same mechanisms. From a phenomenological point of view, those suffering from depression describe their condition as a feeling of a loss of meaning with regard to every action. They experience a radical devaluation of any motivation that leads them to slow the once frenetic pace of their desire until eventually reaching a complete stop. Certainly, people who suffer from depression sink into a self-consciousness of the total lack of expectations for a better life. In reality, however, the impossibility of planning and realizing a future was present long before the onset of depression. From this point of view, the most distressing aspect of the mechanisms of self-realization and joyfulness lies in the never-ending effort that they demand from the subject, defining their life as an infinite task to achieve a future that never comes and that is always at risk of disappearing as a consequence of the personal decisions that one makes. Neoliberal mechanisms configure a world without alternatives in which the future is systematically delayed by expanding the present until it is turned into an experience without a tomorrow. Depressed individuals are those who cannot bear this exasperating delay. This hopeless subject, however, will be immediately captured by the pharmacological apparatus and psychotherapeutic techniques, whose main function lies in repairing the individual to become a functioning producer, without any critical reflections on the social context that determines their psychological suffering. The hopeless subject thus cannot manage to convert their distress into a collective experience or a catalyst for political action. Performance and Anxiety Depression is not the only manifestation of psychological suffering caused by neoliberal mechanisms. Other similar manifestations are paradoxically associated both with the components of what is recognized as success in life, as well as factors related to failure and precariousness. Neoliberal mechanisms constantly and ceaselessly reinforce the subject’s performance.40 This never-ending productive system is based on a political tactic that activates the individual’s self-exploitation and is stimulated by the uncertainty and indeterminacy of the future characteristic of neoliberal existence. Han describes this process as one that inevitably leads to the collapse of the self by a sort of “burnout.”41 The argument is undoubtedly correct, although the Korean-born author mistakenly attributes this phenomenon to a lack of external domination. The violence that subjects exert on themselves, leading them to psychological implosion is not the cultural destiny of our era, but rather a consequence of the rarefied environs in which neoliberal mechanisms

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submerge individuals. Stressed subjects can only breathe air that has been “polluted” by the demands of productivity and, worse yet, are unable to take a break or rest. Depressed individuals in neoliberal societies are unable to communicate the intimate suffering that they experience, and rather must anesthetize it through innumerable, desperate palliative actions, such as the mass consumption of pharmaceuticals and drugs. The practice of hedonistic authoritarianism, forces the concealment of pain through the exclusive legitimation of pleasant experiences, must also be placed in this context. Thus, the inexistence of spaces to socialize about personal suffering is expressed in an inability to relate to the ungrateful, the unavailable, the frustrated or the dull.42 The dogma that “everything must be pleasant” becomes a new requirement for stressed subjects, to the point that pleasure increasingly acquires a narcotic function as a psychological substitute for incommunicable pain. Stress thus seems to be a symptom of individuals struggling to navigate the stormy seas of supposed neoliberal success—not the same case as individuals who are already shipwrecked or who simply have stopped believing in the promised adventure. Here, I am referring to another emotional state correlated with the economic, social, and existential precariousness that neoliberalism endlessly intensifies: anxiety. This form of suffering is linked to maximizing individuals’ perception of insecurity, conncted by Fisher to the “indefinite postponement”43 that many neoliberal mechanisms implement. In this process, the permanent shifting of objects and personal projects toward an unreachable horizon turns human beings into anxious subjects. Neoliberalism makes us feel that we have to work throughout our entire life and in all aspects of it, continuously educating and training ourselves because otherwise we will never produce something stable and secure. This concept of life approximates panic, in its requirement that individuals remain in an indefinite state of alertness.44 Anxious subjects experience endless dangers assailing them from all directions, which are, in fact, no more than an extension of the fragility of the living conditions of a savagely competitive society. This fear can appear as anxiety around leaving the house, crossing the street, agoraphobia and so on—all born of an extreme sensitivity to the affective action that totalitarian powers exert on our lives. Anxiety is not synonymous with a false or exaggerated point of view, but rather a particularly astute perception of what the neoliberal mechanisms have done, do and aim to do with our existence. Anxious subjects are those who understand neoliberalism’s lack of certainty and orienting references, and the ways in which it promotes the fragmentation and atomization of any solid, comfortable space. These subjects realize they are threatened by a social logic that does not provide stability, but rather forces them into an endless experience of restlessness, consequently reducing the value that the

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individual places on existence. In the same way that neoliberal mechanisms impose the tyranny of absolute self-responsibility, they promote the notion that any particular life is completely dispensable. Anxiety thus can be interpreted as a lucid awareness of the alarm caused by living in a world in which everything, even human life, has become dispensable. In short, we are faced with bodies who suffer, overburdened by self-exploitation and distressed by the impossibility of reducing the uncertainty in which they are immersed, while simultaneously forced to hide their pain with a mask of false happiness. These are the bodies of neoliberal production driven to a limit that can only be described as psychological fracture. Moreover, this fracture does not only affect the individual, but society as a whole, by preventing the experience of politized discontent that would otherwise have the potential to bind subjects together in solidarity. Politicizing Psychological Suffering The aforementioned points allow us to conclude that neoliberal societies have tried to depoliticize the experience of psychological suffering by denying the social causes associated with the development of mental illnesses.45 At the same time, the strategy of privatizing psychological disorders has turned these disorders into issues of personal self-management. This also explains the centrality of the strategy of pharmacologization in its reduction of illness to a mere chemical-biological phenomenon. Both strategies fill a decisive role in the production of mental health markets that generate the accumulation of wealth. Above all, however, they contribute to dissolving any potential challenge to the neoliberal mechanisms inherent in psychological suffering. Individualization and psychiatric drugs are thus the two primary mechanisms of containing the political energy of discontent. The privatization and pharmacologization of suffering, however, demand expert knowledge to be efficiently deployed. This specialized knowledge in individual pain and in the administration of medications is the product of both contemporary psychology and psychiatry. Their therapeutic functions are intimately connected to depoliticizing psychological suffering. By this specialized knowledge, I am referring to the body of knowledge derived from different scientific paradigms that claim an exhaustive understanding of the human psyche and the ability to offer readaptive behavioral techniques or chemical substance use programs aimed at reinserting subjects back into societally productive roles. The inability to provide therapy that goes beyond the individual to provoke a critical reflection on social aspects represents a blind spot in this expert knowledge. Neoliberal mechanisms have been successful in impeding the development of a more complex knowledge of psychological health capable of crafting a critical discourse of the pathological conditions of

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society, taking the explanatory factors of human suffering as a starting point. This nonexistent knowledge should reassume the task of politicizing the sphere of mental health, as proposed by Fisher, although the challenge would far exceed the development of an epistemological structure currently absent. Rather, re-politicizing psychological suffering would involve resisting a series of mechanisms that naturalize the neoliberal way of life and reinforce the perception that there is no alternative to the capitalist order. The pillars of this political struggle can be summarized in five points: CREATING NEW FORMS OF EXPERIENCING PSYCHOLOGICAL SUFFERING POLITICALLY As Fisher points out, we need to develop collective experiences and practices that enable individuals to break free from the individualistic logic that neoliberal privatization imposes on pain.46 Here, the feminist struggle can be an important source of inspiration, as its action shows the relevance of shifting criticism from the individual act of bearing witness to the creation of a mass “us” as a collective consciousness. This is only possible if psychological suffering is treated with an approach centered on dialogue, communication, the exchange of experiences and the rejection of silence. This, in turn, involves speaking of the experience and emotions of psychological suffering, and of restoring this dialogue to the public sphere. Of course, psychological suffering is always in danger of being relegated to the domain of personal responsibility so characteristic of and inherent to neoliberal narcissism. For this reason, we need to claim a way of speaking about emotions that is truly political, allowing us to illuminate the hidden power relationships and subjectivation mechanisms which are the effective creators of suffering. Certainly, there are precedents for the politicization of and mass assistance for mental health. Antipsychiatry, for example, deployed a theory and practice whose objective was to de-medicalize the space in which psychiatric disorders occur, formulating alternative opportunities for the disorders to unfold freely without imposing the demand for a “cure.” However, this focus centered its claims on psychiatric hospitals as a “factory of repair,”47 without noting that the root of the problem wasn’t the institutions per se, but rather the power relationships that underpinned them. The problem with antipsychiatry’s attempt to re-politicize mental health was in not recognizing that power relationships are not only found in the institutional apparatus or the supposedly totalitarian function of a Leviathan state. Here lies another important lesson to be learned.

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REVITALIZING THE INSTITUTIONS THAT NEOLIBERALISM HAS LET DECAY First, we need to demand commitments from the state addressing the alarming increase in psychiatric problems. We must also, however, challenge every institution to deploy internal mental health protocols. This reinstitutionalization of psychological suffering cannot take place within the framework of the psychologist paradigm or the psychiatric model, nor can it involve a new legitimation of psychologists’ authority. Internal protocols should not be therapeutic, nor can they be focused on the individual and on the need to readapt or perform. On the contrary, institutions must identify the conditions of their structures that are causes or factors in the acceleration of psychological suffering. Internal protocols should therefore be transformational programs with conditions derived from institutions whose flexibility is not due to the fluidity of their connections to the market, but rather to the contingency of the comprehensive human needs they address. TRANSFORMING PERSONAL DESOLATION INTO POLITICIZED RAGE The problem of psychological suffering must enter into the content of general political discourse. Here, the left, if it still aims to fight for an alternative to the neoliberal way of life, faces an enormous challenge: it must fight against the current status quo by realizing the depth of psychological suffering that underpins our present.48 To move forward in this respect, the first order of business is to elucidate the extraordinary importance of what is at stake. The left has spent decades searching for the political subjects who could be expected to respond or react to the devastating effect of neoliberal mechanisms: the reduction in quality of life, a growing feeling of uncertainty with regards to the future, increased precarity and so on. This extensive list of disastrous consequences, is surprisingly as yet unaccompanied by the substantive emergence of a critical subject capable of creating a different society. If the political left pays close attention to the proliferation of psychological suffering, it will understand that emotional disorders have not only been produced by neoliberal mechanisms, but also that these mechanisms have neutralized the discontent contained within this suffering. It would thus be a matter of liberating this discontent through externalization strategies capable of reorienting attention to dominant social structures as the causes of suffering. The challenge lies in highlighting the connection between psychological suffering and capitalism.

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Building a New Libidinal Form In K-Punk, Fisher claims that “the struggle against neoliberalism will require that we construct an alternative model of desire that can compete with the one pushed by capital’s libidinal technician.”49 This implies recognizing the sophisticated and complex neoliberal mechanisms involved in producing a type of subjectivity sustained on a specific libidinal organization. Modifying this production of desire is only conceivable in two polar opposite contexts. First, it could occur through the abrupt modification of the material circumstances of life in a catastrophic scenario. This has been broadly theorized by a series of eco-apocalyptic discourses that could be ascribed to what Renaud Garcia has called: “collapsology.”50 The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, has provided us some developments in this regard, leading to a dramatic challenge to the neoliberal promise of never-ending individualistic enjoyment. However, now that several years of this crisis have elapsed, the fear resulting from the pandemic is no that of the possibility of death, but of the panic of a future interruption of the complete protocolization of life as dictated by neoliberal society. In this sense, the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the idea that there is nothing beyond neoliberal normalcy. The second path for the emergence of an alternative desire consists of assuming the slow neoliberal demise, and recognizing that this time frame requires us to carry out careful political action. All previously mentioned aspects of the politicization of psychological suffering, communal externalization, or the reinvention of institutional aspects of life would be central pieces in a laborious uncoupling of the subject from the neoliberal mechanisms in which they are inserted. Only this microphysical resistance would be able to illuminate the progressive emergence of a post-neoliberal time that is not synonymous with catastrophe. Learning Another Concept of Happiness Given the fact that the mechanism of happiness is a fundamental power mechanism of neoliberalism, we must challenge the belief that happiness is always good51 and that unhappiness is a disruptive element to be eliminated. Suffering, sadness, and failure offer something more than an experience that should be silenced or negated. As Ahmed notes: “Narrating unhappiness can be an affirmative act, it can indicate the possibility of another world.”52 At present, our society is underpinned by a substantive existential poverty. In this unspoken suffering, there exists, however, an imprecise and undefined aspiration that reveals to us the possibility of something else: another world and another life.

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We must therefore respect the right to be unhappy53 and incorporate it into our coexistence, even if this means questioning what we choose to be and what we are obliged to be. It also implies assuming that there is no happiness that is not accompanied by negativity, as we are finite beings. As Marquard noted, “human happiness is always happiness in unhappiness”54—put differently, happiness is a relative experience that consists of unhappiness not being absolute. Perhaps the possibility of human happiness will be forever out of reach. The true problem, then, is how to counterbalance this in the face of our suffering. Of all the pain of human existence, perhaps there is none greater than the distressing experience of radical individual loneliness, and in this lies precisely the greatest unhappiness that we seek to counterbalance. Unfortunately, the current capitalist order repeatedly reinforces this isolation, turning the abysmal loneliness of existence into something, at present, inconsolable. NOTES 1. This work was made possible thanks to the research project “Classical contemporaneity and its dislocation: from Weber to Foucault” (PID 2020–113413RB-C31, Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain). 2. Canguilhem, Estudios de historia y de filosofía de las ciencias, 406. 3. Foucault, Psychiatric Power. 4. Rose, Inventing Our Selves, 17. 5. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. 6. Fisher, “The privatisation of stress,” 130. 7. Fisher, “The privatisation of stress,” 131. 8. Laval and Dardot, The New Way of Life. 9. Rose, Inventing Our Selves, 73. 10. Rose, Inventing Our Selves, 165. 11. Rose, Inventing Our Selves, 196. 12. Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man, 97. 13. Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness. 14. Rose, Our Psychiatric Future, 201 (Note 12). 15. Rose, Our Psychiatric Future, 47. 16. Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, 8. 17. Rose, Inventing Our Selves, 158. 18. Fisher, K-Punk, 542. 19. Fisher, K-Punk, 543. 20. Fisher, K-Punk, 601. 21. Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 59. 22. Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 10. 23. Smail, The Origins of Unhappiness. 24. Fisher, “The privatisation of stress,” 131.

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25. Davies, The Happiness Industry, 60. 26. Berardi, La fábrica de la infelicidad, 54. 27. Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 66. 28. Han, The Palliative Society, 15. 29. Rose, Inventing Our Selves, 197. 30. Fisher, K-Punk, 546. 31. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid. 32. Fisher, K-Punk, 610. 33. Smail, Power, Interest and Psychology. 34. Fisher, K-Punk, 611. 35. Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self, 4. 36. Fisher, K-Punk, 513. 37. Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self, 8. 38. Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self, 11. 39. Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 35. 40. Crary, 24/7. 41. Han, The Burnout Society, 30. 42. Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 24. 43. Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 22. 44. Fisher, “The privatisation of stress,” 123. 45. Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 37. 46. Fisher, K-Punk, 611. 47. Laing, La politique de l’expérience, 88. 48. Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 80. 49. Fisher, K-Punk, 551. 50. Garcia, La colapsología o la ecología mutilada. 51. Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 13. 52. Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 107. 53. Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 192. 54. Marquard, Felicidad en la infelicidad, 11.

REFERENCES Ahmed, Sara. The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Berardi, Franco “Bifo.” La fábrica de la infelicidad. nuevas formas de trabajo y movimiento global. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2015. Canguilhem, Georges. Estudios de historia y de filosofía de las ciencias. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu, 2009. Crary, Jonathan. 24/7. Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep. London: Verso, 2013. Davies, William. The Happiness Industry. How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being. London: Verso, 2015. Ehrenberg, Alain. The Weariness of the Self. Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age. Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2010. Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism. Is There No Alternative? London: 0 Books, 2009.

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———. “The Privatization of Stress.” Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, 48 (2011): 123–33. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.3898​/136266211797146882. ———. K Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004– 2016). London: Repeater, 2018. Foucault, Michel. Psychiatric Power. Lectures at the Collège de France (1973–1974). London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ———. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France (1977– 1978). London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. García, Renaud. La colapsología o la ecología mutilada. Adrogué: La Cebra, 2021. Han, Byung-Chul. The burnout society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. ———. The Palliative Society. Cambridge: Polity, 2021. Kropotkin, Piotr. Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution. Boston MA: Extending horizons books, 1955. Laing, Ronald. La politique de l’expérience. Paris: Stock, 1969. Laval, Christian, and Pierre Dardot. The New Way of Life: On Neoliberal Society. London: Verso, 2013. Lazzarato, Maurizio. The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition. Los Angeles CA: Semiotext(e), 2007. Marquard, Odo. Felicidad en la infelicidad. Reflexiones filosóficas. Buenos aires: Katz, 2006. Rose, Nikolas. Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. Our Psychiatric Future. Cambridge: Polity, 2019. Smail, David. Power, Interest and Psychology: Elements of a Social Materialist Understanding of Distress. Monmouth: Pccs books, 2005. ———. The Origins of Unhappiness: A New Understanding of Personal Distress. London: Routledge, 2019. Whitaker, Robert. Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.

Chapter 5

Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness The Perils of Modern Subjectivity in Contemporary Mexico Zenia Yébenes

Hannah Arendt suggests that Kant’s political philosophy is to be found in those passages in the Critique of Judgment that deal with the imagination and the capacity of aesthetic judgment to mobilize a common sense about the appearance of the world, regardless of empirical disagreements among observers.1 Imagination lies between the individual faculty and its social context, contributing both to our sense of reality and our capacity to act on it. However, the instituting social imaginary is always at the same time instituted. Society can exist by virtue of the fragmentary, partial, and complementary embodiment and incorporation of its imaginary meanings in the subjects who live, speak and act within that society.2 In Neoliberalism from Below, Gago proposes a form of mapping neoliberalism as a battlefield “of competing forces rather than simply as a hegemonic order.”3 The core of Gago’s analysis is to expose the complexity of neoliberalism’s immanent functioning, so as to identify potential points of political intervention. I question whether neoliberalism is not hegemonic precisely because it is a field of competing forces—“competition” is part of its definition. In order to locate potential points of political intervention, we must be clear about whether these potential points have to do with the empirical disagreements referred to by Arendt, or whether in truth they involve the mobilization of an imagination capable of producing a different common sense. In any case, it should be noted that legitimacy, as Weber pointed out, is 85

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also a question of symbolic perception.4 Hence Arendt’s assertion that action requires the capacity to imagine the world differently. Based on her fieldwork researching an illegal market on the border between Buenos Aires and its urban periphery, Gago articulates the idea that neoliberalism is also produced “from below” and as such, is rooted in specific territories, practices and, subjectivities. Following this thread, I am not so much interested in “popular baroque economies” as I am in the languages and modes of experience with which people account for their own lives. I hold that “following the words and plot of a single person can help us to identify the many juxtaposed contexts, pathways, and interactions— the ‘in-betweenness’—through which social life and ethics are empirically worked out.”5 As Paul Rabinow writes: “A pedagogy of inquiry is hierarchical and mutually formative. As it is hierarchical, it requires care; as it is a process, it requires time; and as it is practice of inquiry, it requires conceptual work.”6 Inquiry comes into being because the positions of researcher and interlocutor both infect and affect—haunting, negotiating and altering– each other in ways that are never fixed or without power dynamics. In this chapter, I shall focus on the life of Rodrigo,7 whom I interviewed at length four times and with whom I had intermittent informal conversations over the course of two years. First, though, allow me to situate what the focus of my discussion by providing some sociological background. MEXICAN POST-NEOLIBERALISM? On March 17, 2019, Mexican President López Obrador decreed “the end of the neoliberal era” in the country. His self-appointed Cuarta Transformación8 has criticized the nation’s subordination to capital and presented itself as “a different government” from that of neoliberalism. The regime’s alliance with billionaire businessmen, however, as well as its renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, make clear that the true situation is rather more complex. It’s true that the López Obrador government has implemented some progressive reforms, such as wage increases. These measures, although insufficient, are an important step to begin to reverse decades of wage stagnation. What distinguishes the government of the Cuarta Transformación, however, is its reluctance to implement a progressive fiscal reform that allows financing social policy. Instead, the government is committed to the scrupulous observance of austerity, one of the policies most defended by neoliberalism in its assault on the civil administration. Austerity operates as a budget reallocation in place of a fiscal reform that would allow taxing the richest members of society, who, under austerity, remain protected.

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Social programs are understood as a direct and unmediated relationship between the individual and the state, and proponents of the programs argue that their main feature is to establish this individual-state link directly, without intermediaries. Cash transfers, however, can perversely replicate neoliberal logics by eroding social forms of organization and support. Social spending under López Obrador’s government remains below levels seen in the period from 2009 to 2016. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, draconian measures were proposed that would have pleased even the International Monetary Fund of the 1990s9—Mexico’s COVID-19 spending was less than 1 percent of its GDP. In comparison, the spending of Chile and Brazil, for example, represented almost 8 percent of GDP. Despite its political delegitimization in López Obrador´s government, neoliberalism persists as a device for the production of subjects through a way of imagining according to which competition replaces exchange as the defining principle of the market. These market parameters become the guiding norm of all social life, with competition and consumption as the primary forms of social bonding. In Mexico, power functions both through corporate forms of extraction and exploitation operating in collaboration with the state and the visible legal establishment, as well as in a hidden fringe that serves as a space of exception. This hidden fringe is connected with the colonial history of Latin America, where Creole elites consistently favored a certain independence with respect to royal-imperial Spain as way of protecting their personal and family interests. This ambiguous space of illegality was the site of some of the most infamous exploitation and violence of the native peoples and the Afro population—we cannot forget that neoliberalism’s legitimacy in Mexico is interwoven in the history of cultural, gender, social, and political colonization constitutive of Latin America10 as well as in its relationship with the United States.11 During his campaign, López Obrador promised to put an end to the ineffective war on organized crime. Once in power, a presidential decree on security empowered the army and navy to perform police tasks such as arrests and property seizures throughout the country, without clear regulation or subordination to civilian authorities. The military budget skyrocketed to levels of spending similar to or higher than sectors such as welfare and healthcare. The National Guard, created in 2019 as a hybrid civil-military organization became Mexico’s third-largest military force. The violence is staggering: the country officially recognizes more than 100,000 missing persons.12 The agenda of the Armed Forces extends to anti-immigrant policies, the control of customs, ports and highways, and an extraordinary state concession to build, operate, and manage neo-development megaprojects. Moreover, the government has promoted a series of policies in violation of environmental protections by designating infrastructure megaprojects as

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national security projects (which need not comply with environmental regulations). The Cuarta Transformación has decimated the already small budgets of Mexico’s environmental authorities: budget cuts have sometimes been as high as 90 percent from one year to the next, essentially eliminating oversight capacity.13 During the first three years of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year term, fifty-eight environmental and territorial defenders have been murdered. Most of these murders and other violence against activists have gone unpunished.14 Mexican post-neoliberalism signals neither an overcoming of nor a rupture with neoliberalism but rather a) neoliberalism’s crisis of legitimacy as a state-institutional policy, b) the mutations of global capitalism since the 2008 crisis, c) certain institutional policies of a government that designates itself as “progressive” and, d) the persistence of neoliberalism as a common sense that allows the incorporation or immanentization of some of its fundamental premises. These premises could include, for instance, neoliberalism’s conversion of people into mere consumers or producers, workers or employers, suppliers or demanders of goods and services, with no consideration for anything other than the production and accumulation of wealth. The contemporary Mexican state does not reject capital, but does partly reject the property relations resulting from the process of neoliberalization and the previous passivity of the state in addressing its social consequences.15 Post-neoliberal Mexico is “a state in which the logical order of Cartesian thinking doesn’t quite work and yet doesn’t quite not work either. It is a state in which things are a little off where they should be and sometimes very much off, so that the state of things seems crazy.”16 IMAGINATION, THE BODY, AND NEOLIBERAL COMMON SENSE The definition of “reality” is the result of the dialectic between the instituted and the instituting of the imaginary. Subjects can only exist in the social imaginary, and the social imaginary can only exist in and through subjects.17 Imagining is defined by the tacit border of the body, and involves acts of framing, connecting, and eliminating. My own body and mind are accessible to me only by using concepts and patterns of perception that are a priori and historically and socioculturally conditioned. “Although the knowledge I have of my own body and the bodies of others may be scientifically accurate and technically useful, I must use imagination to connect the right concepts with relevant observations and identify significant similarities between gestures, organs, and forms.”18 As I understand it, this is not a question of the “real” material body or of the noumenal body lying behind a world of language or

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of discursive signs, but rather of an entity whose reality is disclosed and acted upon through the signs that different beings perceive as inhering in it. The body is also an image of the ways in which an individual can relate to other bodies, objects, forces, and contexts that are not immediately recognizable, not only to justify or reinforce one’s current identity, but also to generate new events. When on April 28, 2022, a military member of the National Guard killed a young Guanajuato University student, the National Guard issued a brief statement indicating that the events occurred within the framework of the national strategy to combat the theft of hydrocarbons (huachicoleo). National Guard members were carrying out “dissuasive reconnaissance” in the municipality of the university when they noticed the presence of two vehicles and were unable to identify their occupants. The agent, according to the statement, fired because he felt “confusion and uncertainty.”19 We could say, echoing Laura Hengehold’s analysis of the NYPD shooting of Eleanor Bumpurs in 1984,20 that the bodies of the students were, for the National Guard, “something more” than what was visible. That “something more” is due to the fact that the discourses and practices claiming to determine our bodies are less unified than we fear or would like to believe. The body is the locus of heterotopia—a juxtaposition of several “emplacements that are irreducible to each other and absolutely nonsuperposable.”21 There are different spaces of imagination, different ways of naming or organizing a body. This indeterminacy existed in the agent’s imaginary as a “danger” that allowed him to articulate the “gap” between his felt duty as a member of the National Guard, his assessment of the fight against huachicoleo, his conception of what was a “normal” versus a “risky” situation, as well as his valorization of the conditions under which he had the right to use lethal force. In an ontological sense, the bodies of the students existed not only in their own flesh and language, but in the bodies and codes of others who, through them, sought to shape their own experience. Common sense imagines certain matters and not others “—as being what they are in the simple nature of the case. An air of ‘of-courseness,’ a sense of ‘it figures’ is cast over things—again, some selected, underscored things. They are depicted as inherent in the situation, intrinsic aspects of reality, the way things go.”22 Institutions and neoliberal practices imagine and make us imagine what we want to be and what we do not want to be. We often shape our experience through imagining, in the bodies of others, “formed” examples of poverty, bad luck, incompetence, or deviance that we hope to avoid. Hengehold explains that, like Kant’s noumena, “deviance” or “delinquency” cannot be seen “in themselves,” but only in their effects. Their most profound effects are manifest in the “normal’” person’s effort to flee or control anyone

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who embodies or suffers from such forces.23 These “formed” examples constitute bodies for whom heterotopia works, unfailingly, against. FRAGMENTS OF A STORY With two million inhabitants, Iztapalapa, located in the east of Mexico City, is a suburb the size of a city with the structure of a barrio. It is also home to half of the capital’s prison population. Rodrigo, twenty-eight, has been in intermittent outpatient consultation at the National Psychiatric Hospital since 2018 and suffers from severe anxiety. “I have to work, but I can’t because I don’t sleep, I’m so tired,” he explains. Rodrigo began working as a diablero24 in the La Merced Market until the 2013 fire affected his employer’s budget. Now, when he’s able, he works as a chalán25 and diablero at the tianguis de las Torres, a temporary market that pops up, and disappears, three times a week, located on an enormous avenue called Eje Seis. The precarious towers that lend the place its name rise above a sea of tarpaulins: the roofs of hundreds of stalls that form a hallucinatory cosmos. “I’m el prieto (the dark one), the most chaka26 . . . I got into trouble . . . you know . . . I was an addict, I did some stuff . . . but when my daughters were born, I straightened up.” Rodrigo is extremely thin, but prefers to spend the little money he has not on food but on cigarettes, which allow him to cope with his anxiety. One of his hands is bandaged: “I feel so much rage, I hit the wall” he says. We go outside and I see him shaking as he prepares a cigarette. “What is it that makes you feel mad?” I ask him. “Not being able to,” he answers. Omnipresent in Rodrigo’s narrative is his fixation with the image others have of him. He recounts the fact he cannot enter a shopping mall without being followed by security guards, that every time he boards a bus at night others see him as a criminal, that if he enters or walks in certain places they immediately make him feel he is an intruder, that the police have stopped and beaten him for no reason; that the soldiers flag him down at every highway checkpoint on the highway. His body is a body that is scrutinized, checked, and suspected. The “universal subject” of so much of science and philosophy, on the other hand, is one whose circumstances require him to be less aware of his body. Drew Leder writes that while we are constituted by corporeality, the lived experience of the body is often accompanied by absence—we do not usually need to be monitoring our body.27 Of course, this is not true for all bodies. For someone like Rodrigo, poor and racialized, this unconsciousness of the body is impossible—he is often in situations which require self-surveillance and interpretation so as to infer what others can see when they see him. Rodrigo’s body is not only ‘‘physical,” but also involves

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the imagination of bodies other than his own. He is held to these fictions by the power relations vested in his body—the realest thing he knows.28 “I struggle to sleep, nothing helps,” he tells me thoughtfully. Here, we should note the way that “struggle” is to assume a position of combat and defense, while sleep seems to allude to precisely the opposite: a distinct state of helplessness that requires us to trust the world around us. While I sleep, I can still have mental content (I can dream), but I do not direct this experience. The content of dreams is both mine and not mine, and thus offers me the opportunity to continue to exist while I take a break from being myself.29 Throughout his oeuvre, Frantz Fanon insists that the only thing he wants (and is systematically denied) is to be “a man among other men.”30 Upon arriving in Paris, Fanon describes how encountering the gaze of a white girl on a train, who exclaims, “Look, a Negro!” In that moment, Fanon’s body becomes hypervisible to Fanon himself, and, for the first time, he relates to himself as black: “My body was given back to me sprawled out, distorted, recolored . . . The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is mean, the Negro is ugly.”31 Lacking anonymity, “Fanon not only has no place of rest or neutrality, but his attempts to go out into the world and be open to others are contaminated by the same racist overdetermination.”32 As it was with the locus of colonial power, the locus of control of neoliberal common sense is the way we imagine ourselves and the way we imagine others imagine us. When the anonymity of the dream (or the neutrality longed for by Fanon) becomes impossible and “we are left with only the violent exposure of a two-dimensional life, we likewise lose the ability to imagine another way of relating to others, of opening ourselves up and creating worlds that are not overdetermined.”33 In his narrative, Rodrigo acknowledges his anger and violence, which he directs, at first, toward his own body. He speaks of his “rage” and how he smashed a door with his head, pointing to his broken nose. His entire face and hands are full of small scars. PHARMAKON “I used to rent a room for me and my family from my mother; now, because I can’t work as much as I used to, I give her what I can for food [instead of rent], but she doesn´t give us any meals.” Rodrigo’s recurring obsession, made more acute by the pandemic, is to be able to work. As soon as he can, he begins to work without rest at the tianguis, while also helping his brother, a microbus driver, collect fares, and in “any job that comes up.” “I live near a funeral parlor” he says. “Every time some motherfucker dies or gets killed they close the street and shoot bullets in the air. They do what they want. If I wanted to, I could earn a good baro (money) by selling polvo (drugs) and

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doing some tranzas (crooked deals) for the jefes, but that means exposing my daughters.” His rotten choice is between “doing some tranzas,” and thus putting his family at risk, or taking a risk that exposes only himself, something he sees as unavoidable if he wants to achieve his goals. He works nonstop, taking methamphetamines to avoid falling asleep, until anxiety attacks and insomnia force him to stop. In Rodrigo’s story, we must note his distinction between drugs and what he calls medicines (psychiatric treatment). A self-described former user of crack and cocaine, Rodrigo has a particular relationship with medicines that reveals an underground economy in which he participates and rationalizes as follows. Upon deciding that the medication he is prescribed for anxiety has served its purpose of bringing him out of his crisis, Rodrigo discontinues his treatment and sells or gives away his medication to others, replacing it with amphetamine. This practice is common among who choose not to finish their treatments, for example, of lorazepam or fluoxetine, in the barrio and the tianguis. In this underground economy, pharmaceutical drugs are the preferred treatment. This due to both the Mexican health system’s privileging of outpatient treatment, as well as new regulations converting psychiatric hospitals into general hospitals without proposing alternative models. During the pandemic, the shortage of medicines caused by the government’s fight against the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry (without providing alternative sources of medication) further increased this practice of buying and selling medicine under the table. These medicines are used according to the criteria of the consumer, for various purposes: “to avoid feeling down,” “to be able to rest” or “to have energy.” Sometimes, they are used according to the criteria of families acting as what Biehl calls “proxy psychiatrists.”34 As formal institutions of social welfare vanish or become nonfunctional, and public health becomes “pharmaceuticalized,” poor urban families become “affectively politicized.” Families take on the roles and functions of the state in deciding whose lives are worth caring for. As Clara Han points out, this is due not only to the economic pressures of the market, but to the very ways in which discourses of market value and treatment adherence provide the neoliberal common sense for neglecting kin. Social relations involve subtleties and cruelties that impact local forms of care and neglect in which neoliberal values are inscribed although not univocally.35 Rodrigo distinguishes amphetamine from cocaine and crack. Cocaine and crack are addictive and expensive, and he describes them as a “vice.” Amphetamine is cheaper but he feels he can control it and says it helps him to work. Sometimes when he goes out, he uses methamphetamine, but only occasionally: “You have to be very careful with that chingadera.” In practice, Rodrigo questions the difference between drugs and medicines: in his view,

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drugs and medicines are part of the same continuum. Medicines help him escape anxiety when it is unbearable, while amphetamines help him work and feel capable. Methamphetamine, on the other hand, is only for fiestas. Medicines and drugs are also bought and sold in the underground market— the former illegally and without medical prescription. Both substances are recognized as part of global assemblages of production and consumption with networks linking powerful state actors with the pharmaceutical industry, drug traffickers, farmers, transportation mechanisms, police, the military, the court system, prisons, rehabilitation centers, hospitals, patients, and consumers of all social strata.36 Within the “common sense” inherent to this system, drugs are seen to produce forms of sociability that are “not only stigmatizing rather than life-affirming, but also lethal.”37 Reality, however, is more complex. Regardless of medical notions of addiction, for Rodrigo only cocaine and crack can be considered addictive and can be properly called drugs. Amphetamine, he says, actually prevents him from relapsing into crack and cocaine addiction and allows him to work. In his view, methamphetamine could be a drug but isn’t, because he uses it only occasionally. Although he is not always successful in this, and sometimes relapses, he attempts to calculate his dosage so as to feel capable and work at the correct pace. Abandoning the medication for amphetamines once he has overcome his crisis allows him to work until his anxiety returns, and the cycle continues. Rodrigo’s ability to generate a livelihood through drugs relates to the need to protect his family, feel energized to work, and respond to his own desire. His continuous negotiation with drugs and medicines is a constant learning process. His relationship with drugs is social (involving other people, entities, and objects) and has an evident corporal dimension: his body is his learning medium and his learned object. The experiential aspects of substances are necessary for integration of his life. Crucial in this process is the image Rodrigo wants to have of himself as a subject in control. For Rodrigo, physical and mental health reside within him as a potential power to generate “human capital” and compete, as it is according to neoliberal common sense. Paradoxically, his project of what for him is an affirmation of life—to work in order to have a future—inevitably arises from putting himself in close proximity to death.38 Deleuze distinguishes the lethality of drugs by warning that “The suicidal occur when everything is reduced to this flow alone: ‘my hit,’ ‘my trip,’ ‘my glass.’ It is the contrary of connections; it is organized disconnections.”39 In Rodrigo’s case, however, drugs have to do with a demand to be hyperconnected that both puts him in danger and also speaks to the fragility and porosity of affective bonds.

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POROUS KNOWLEDGE To work means, according to Rodrigo, “to get respect,” or “that my daughters don’t lack anything.” “First I want to raise money to have my own car to become an Uber driver because I don’t want any cabrón to tell me what I have to do.” Rodrigo assumes that affective bonding with others entails competitiveness and consumption. If he gives his mother “more money” than his brothers and also buys her presents, he is disconcerted by the fact that he does not get the recognition he expects from her: “She doesn’t serve my food or cook for me like she does with the others.” He himself, however, acknowledges with perplexity that, although he sometimes is able to support his mother economically, by “working hard” and buying her “presents,” that this doesn’t seem to be enough. As he tells me: “I don’t know what the fucking people want, you know?” Within Rodrigo’s narrative of his family environment, one can be rejected for being darker or chaka than others, but also for being regarded as presumptuous and making others appear as less than oneself, for spending above one’s means, for being “lazy,” i.e., not paying one’s debts or living too long at the expense of others, or for being a good-for-nothing. It should be noted, however, that the timing and manner in which these criteria are applied is discretionary and unpredictable. In Rodrigo’s mother’s house, relatives come and go, thrown in and out by the pandemic and its consequences, and are invited to stay or leave, either actively or passively. Here we see an existential pressure to recognize and respond affectively at the household level to critical moments generated by events occurring at the macro level, events such as the pandemic or job cuts.40 One’s place in the house is never permanent; it is spatially and temporally discrete. This sense of uncertainty permeates all everyday relationships and provokes suspicions regarding changes in the tone of voice, looks, or gestures of others. ‘‘Envy,” as Taussig notes, is an ‘‘implicit social knowledge,” and as such becomes ‘‘a theory of social relations that functions as a presence immanent in the coloring of dialogue, setting its tones, feelings, and stock of imagery.”41 Subjectivity, then, can be understood as that singular fabric of relationships in which the problem of the other is experienced in one’s own body—a body that can be cared for or rejected by others. The dense and complex ties of family relations contrast with the more subtle support provided by other chalanes with whom Rodrigo competes for work and doesn’t share a friendship. Nevertheless, sometimes they drop by at his work and casually bring him food, claiming that they miscalculated when cooking and there were leftovers. These acts are not done as favors, but rather denote a certain impersonality, occurring without warning.42 They are usually

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described as gestures that make “un paro”—according to the Diccionario del Español Usual de México, an ‘interruption’ or ‘sudden suspension of some activity,’ but also a slang word meaning the help that thieves receive by having a partner distract the victim.43 A paro means to stop time, to take a break, as well as to help by ‘covering up’ someone’s situation, in this case, of need. The murmurs and half-words of conversations, the gossip, and the deciphering of signals in the hallucinated microcosm of the tianguis produce what Veena Das calls a “porous knowledge” of others that allows one to know when someone is in trouble, even if this someone is not a friend.44 This porous knowledge, though, also has its dark side in the form of obligations. EVIL Current notions of securitization in Mexico are spatial. In the neighborhood, though, people relate temporarily to their enemies: in the tianguis and the barrio, it is essential to play to the humor of the police. Rodrigo has been in jail, has bribed policemen and has been the victim of bribes from policemen; he also has close ties to them. In fact, his older brother was, for a time, a policeman, before becoming a microbus driver. The emphasis on locating danger in space has increased police presence in certain spaces and forced adversaries of different groups to live closer to both the police and to each other. People who, to outsiders, are nominally regarded as archenemies, such as rival gangs, police officers, and criminals, find themselves living in close proximity to one another. The relationships they maintain are not fixed, but complex, and involve negotiation, hierarchy, hostility, and complicity. In that closeness, people seek to buy time.45 They constantly explore each other’s bodies in search of signs in an attempt to make them transparent. Ideologies of difference take the form of bodily signs that feed the obsession to make legible bodies perceived as threatening. These intense practices of legibilit, however, often produce more opacity, as subjects manipulate stereotypes in order to imagine that they see everything and yet in reality see nothing.46 Witchcraft becomes a recurring theme in the tianguis when misfortunes accumulate in the life of someone like Rodrigo: working tirelessly yet not seeing results, physical and psychological decline, estrangement from his mother, his wife being diagnosed with depression, his merchandise being stolen, deaths in his family (his father in an accident and a brother in the pandemic) etc. The locus of witchcraft is related to intense affective forces. Cognitive dissonance and contradictory practices constitute the reality that is intrinsic to witchcraft. Dissonance and contradiction are actually precise indications of the power of occult forces, which arise from the recognition

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that something potentially deadly lies beyond our perception.47 The reality of occult forces is not ordinary reality but rather something that filters through ordinary reality, ultimately shaping it and making it possible to imagine reality as a space of death where one’s life is at risk. In neoliberal common sense, the entrepreneurial aspect of witchcraft finds fertile ground to develop in eclectic ways.48 For example, when talking about the brujos, Rodrigo speaks, although not exclusively, about Santería. This religion is heavily dependent on a hierarchical system of initiation and includes animal sacrifice as part of its foundational belief in the reciprocal exchange of cosmological energies. For Rodrigo, black magic usually involves the guidance from practitioners of either Santería or Mayombe. But while he sees Mayombe as a practice of purely “black” magic, Santeria can also be used, in his account, for “white” magic. His account of magic captures the dynamism of affects, relations, and the categories of good and evil. Rodrigo once told me his sister took him to a witch healer who, after careful consideration of his case, concluded that his misfortunes were related to a “trabajo” (spell) cast by a santero who worked for one of Rodrigo´s cousins. The witch healer then offered a series of techniques to get rid of the spell. Rodrigo’s cousin had supposedly wanted to do him harm (un daño) to capture his vital “force”—his capacity for survival for production and sexual and economic reproduction. According to Rodrigo, someone had seen his cousin going to the market to buy a black chicken (used in rituals of black magic) and only a few weeks later his merchandise was stolen, his brother got sick, and his own anxiety became so severe he had to be hospitalized. Biopower does not function in the same way everywhere—witchcraft here reveals that the objective is the regulation not of life but of death. In this way, biopolitics is replaced by necropolitics.49 Without going into details, Rodrigo told me that when a man is robbed of his life force, the witch healer has to help him find it and strengthen it. That strength, in its most powerful form, is found precisely in the capacity for evil, allowing him to see himself not as a victim but as a perpetrator. Accusations of false pretenses and of being driven by profit are the most effective ways brujos neutralize competitors in their profession. At the same time, however, prosperity and mundane power can also be markers of spiritual power. socialization teaches men that they are only men if they are capable of competing with other men for control of sexual, economic, symbolic resources, etc. In this sense, the status of masculinity is not acquired once and for all but must be demonstrated over and over again. The mandate of masculinity based on competition for the control of resources (sexual, symbolic, economic) is functional to neoliberal common sense. The current exacerbation of violence in Mexico is not only due to the destabilization of traditional gender roles but because, in neoliberalism, it is a male minority that holds a huge

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concentration of resources at the expense of the traditional roles of the male majority.50 Witchcraft reveals our common vulnerability “not only in the face of an external world of powerful institutions that can and do inflict violence, but also in the face of the terrifying realization that healing itself could be a means of becoming the instruments of that violence.”51 Unlike securitization programs and their emphasis on spatiality, witchcraft acknowledges the importance of time. It does not overtly address anything that might precipitate conflict in public space. It works in the realm of the occult, with a temporality that requires patience. It is ritual time that has to do its work. Witchcraft allows imagining all the forces that affect one’s life and unifying them from an experience that is always inevitably fragmented. It allows a realization and redefinition of power relations in oneself and with others. It is not a matter of logic, but of ontology, specifically of how we understand truth as nonrepresentational but as a mobile and open-ended. This inventive definition understands the way that truth, rather than defining, makes the world and the subject.52 JUST LIFE Rodrigo’s image of himself in relation to others as a masculine body capable of being competitive and working to exhaustion is confronted with multiple images of what he imagines others see in him. He faces multiple incompatible images and discourses marked by different demands. It takes great strength to hold these discourses at arm’s length, not to blame oneself for not having lived up to them.53 But neoliberal common sense works precisely by appealing to the subjects’ desire to unify all these discourses through the exemplarity of their own effort, of an infinite work on themselves, putting their own bodies at risk. Rodrigo finds himself trapped in a circle between resentment for his lack of recognition by his family, the sense of debt to them, and his guilt for “not being good enough.” He tries to solve this vicious circle by “working more,” until, as he says, he “breaks down.” I understand problematization as a symptom of conflict between various ways of imaginatively structuring a social field related to the practical conduct of people’s lives. For example, Rodrigo notes the incongruence between the stigma of drug use and the acceptance of medication use and deliberately uses one or the other, rather than accepting the simplistic prohibition of drugs. Likewise, his relationship with drugs and amphetamines varies and is socially charged with contradictory expectations: “be healthy to work,” “work until exhaustion,” “use to be competitive,” “avoid using.” This locus

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of problematization is linked to that of insomnia and the need to sleep, which points to problems of hyperconnectivity and hyperstimulation that block the subject’s capacity and overdetermine him/her. Relationships between acquaintances and relatives allow us to gauge the need for closeness and distance necessary for protecting ourselves. They also elucidate the incoherence of privileging consumption and competition as forms of social bonding while realizing that we desire affection or kindness, sometimes provided to us by those with whom we compete. Even in their darkest aspects—as in the case of witchcraft—these relational bonds configure and recognize a space of death, that is, where one’s own life is in danger, and to recognize not only violence or evil in others but also in oneself. Witchcraft allows realizing that, perhaps paradoxically, the answer to this space of death has to do with time. Lives, I believe, are made up of relationships—with institutions, with people, with our environment, and with things (such as medicines and drugs). What we exclude, what we isolate, is always a political operation. This fact requires us to question binaries such as the individual and the collective, what is part of a struggle or what is just life or, in some cases, just death. Mapping neoliberal capitalism’s methods of exploitation and value extraction from the perspective of different varieties lives, can help generalize different kinds of struggles.54 We should understand these struggles as loci of problematization that show how the self-sufficient neoliberal subject’s own imagination sustains differential distributions of harms and lethalities, and “elucidate how those harms and lethalities may, in fact, be eclipsed by this subject.”55 NOTES 1. Arendt, Lectures; Hengehold, The Body Problematic. 2. See Bottici, Imaginal Politics, and “De la política.” 3. Gago, Neoliberalism from Below, 176. 4. See Weber, Economía y sociedad. 5. Biehl, Vita, 10. 6. Rabinow, Anthropos Today, 90. 7. Rodrigo is a pseudonym. 8. The official narrative inscribes itself in the transformations that would have materialized in important changes in the history of Mexico: the first the Independence; the second, the Reform; the third, the Revolution; and the fourth López Obrador´s government and the end of neoliberalism. 9. See Ríos, “La obsesiva austeridad”; “El gasto social”; “La desigualdad.” 10. See Segato, La Guerra and Contra pedagogías. 11. See Zavala, Los cárteles no existen and La guerra en las palabras. 12. Zavala, “La seguridad nacional.” 13. De Miguel, “El cártel de Sinaloa.”

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14. CEMDA, “Informe.” 15. Centeno, “López Obrador,” 163–207. 16. Aretxaga, “Madness,” 44. 17. Bottici, Imaginal Politics. 18. Hengehold, The Body Problematic, 7. 19. Saucedo, “El asesinato de Ángel Yael.” 20. Hengehold, The Body Problematic. 21. Foucault, Aesthetics, 178. 22. Geertz, Local Knowledge, 85. 23. Hengehold, The Body Problematic, 129. 24. A diablero is a worker who transports goods in a market with a diablito, a two-wheeled cart with a platform on which things are transported. 25. The chalán is the assistant of the owner of the stall. 26. There are different versions of the origins of the word “chaka,” some see it as something negative, labeling chakas as “cholos” for being a group that associated with reggaeton and criminal activities, suggest that it comes from “chacal,” an animal that in popular culture has been related to the figure of the devil. 27. Leder, The Absent Body. 28. Hengehold, The Body Problematic. 29. Heyes, Anaesthetics, 60–62. 30. Fanon, Black Skin, 112; Heyes, Anaesthetics, 60–62. 31. Fanon, Black Skin, 113; Heyes, Anaesthetics, 60–62. 32. Heyes, Anaesthetics, 62. 33. Salamon, “The Place Where Life Hides Away,” 107–10. 34. Biehl, Vita; Han, Life. 35. Han, Life; Han, “Suffering and Pictures.” 36. Goodfellow, “Pharmaceutical Intimacy.” 37. Goodfellow, “Pharmaceutical Intimacy,” 274; Rhodes et al., “The Social Structural Production of HIV.” 38. Scheper Hughes, Death without Weeping; Han, Life. 39. Deleuze, Two Regimes, 153. 40. Han, Life. 41. Taussig, Shamanism, 393–94. 42. Das, “Neighbors Acts”; Han, Life. 43. Kristensen, “Postponing Death,” 16. 44. Das, “Neighbors Acts.” 45. Kristensen, “Postponing Death,” 12. 46. Aretxaga, “Maddening States,” 404. 47. Favret- Saada, Deadly Words; Favret-Saada, The Anti Witch. 48. Romberg, Witchcraft and Welfare, 266. 49. Mbembe, Necropolítica; Valencia, Capitalismo gore. 50. Segato, La guerra. 51. Das, “Preface,” xv. 52. See Holbraad, Truth in Motion. 53. Hengehold, The Body Problematic, 5.

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54. See Gago and Brown, “Is There a Neoliberalism from Below?” 55. Han, “Suffering and Pictures,” 233.

REFERENCES Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant´s Political Philosophy. Edited by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Aretxaga, Begoña. “Maddening States.” Annual Review of Anthropology 32 (2003): 393–410. ———. “Madness and the Politically Real: Reflections on Violence in Postdictatorial Spain” In Postcolonial Disorders. Edited by Mary-Jo Del Vecchio Good., Sandra Teresa Hyde, Sarah Pinto and Byron J. Good, 43–61. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Biehl, Joao. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Bottici, Chiara. Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary, New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. ———. “De la política de la imaginación a la política imaginal.” Temas y Debates 36, (2018): 21–39. CEMDA. 2021. “Informe sobre la situación de personas y comunidades defensoras de los derechos humanos y ambientales en México.” Accessed March 1, 2022. https:​ //​www​.cemda​.org​.mx​/publicaciones​-y​-estudios​-del​-cemda​/cemda​-informe​-2021​/. Centeno, Ramón I. “López Obrador o la izquierda que no es.” Foro internacional, vol. LXI, núm. 1, (2021):163–207. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.24201​/fi​.v61i1​.2716. Das, Veena. “Neighbors and acts of silent kindness.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3, no. 1, (2013): 217–20. Das, Veena. “Preface.” In the Anti-Witch by Jeanne Favret-Saada. ix–xv. Chicago: Hau, 2015. Deleuze, Gilles. Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews (1975–1995), New York: Semiotext(e), 2006. De Miguel. Teresa. 2022. “El Cartel de Sinaloa y el CJNG se están haciendo con el control absoluto de la industria pesquera y maderera en México.” El país, May 22, 2022. https:​//​elpais​.com​/mexico​/2022​-05​-22​/el​-cartel​-de​-sinaloa​-y​-el​-cjng​-se​ -estan​-haciendo​-con​-el​-control​-absoluto​-de​-la​-industria​-pesquera​-y​-maderera​-en​ -mexico​.html. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove, 1967. Favret-Saada, Jeanne. Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. ———. The Anti-Witch. Chicago: Hau, 2015. Foucault, Michel. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. Edited by James D. Faubion. Volume 2 of Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984. New York: New Press, 1998. Gago, Verónica. Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.

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Gago, Verónica, and Wendy Brown. “Is There a Neoliberalism ‘From Below’? a Conversation Between Verónica Gago and Wendy Brown.” Accessed February 5, 2022. https:​//​www​.versobooks​.com​/blogs​/4926​-is​-there​-a​-neoliberalism​-from​ -below​-a​-conversation​-between​-veronica​-gago​-and​-wendy​-brown. Gertz, Clifford. Local Knowledge. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Goodfellow. Aaron. “Pharmaceutical Intimacy: Sex, Death and Methanphetamine.” Home Culture 5, no. 3, (2008): 271–300. Han, Clara. Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. ———. “Suffering and Pictures of Anthropological Inquiry: A Response to Comments on Life in Debt.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3, no. 1, (2013): 231–40. Hengehold, Laura. The Body Problematic: Political Imagination in Kant and Foucault. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. Heyes, Cressida J. Anaesthetics of existence: Essays on Experience at the Edge, Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. Holbraad, Martin. Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. Kristensen, Regnar. “Postponing Death: Saints and Security in Mexico City” PhD diss., University of Copenhagen, 2011. Leder, Drew. The Absent Body. Chigago: The University Chicago Press, 1990. Mbembe, Achille. Necropolítica. Barcelona: Melusina, 2011. Rabinow, Paul. Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Rhodes, Tim, Merrill Singer, Philippe Bourgois, Samuel. R. Friedman, Steffanie A Strathdee. “The Social Structural Production of HIV Risk among injecting Drug Users.” Social Science and Medicine 61, no. 5, (2005): 1026–44. Ríos, Viri. “La obsesiva austeridad de López Obrador perjudica más a los pobres.” New York Times, April 14, 2020.https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/es​/2020​/04​/14​/espanol​/ opinion​/coronavirus​-plan​-economico​-mexico​-amlo​.html. ———. “El gasto social que no es.” Expansión política, November 15, 2021. https:​//​ politica​.expansion​.mx​/voces​/2021​/11​/15​/viri​-rios​-el​-gasto​-social​-que​-no​-es. ———. “La desigualdad creada por el Covid era evitable.” Expansión política, February 8, 2021. https:​//​politica​.expansion​.mx​/voces​/2021​/02​/08​/viri​-rios​-la​ -desigualdad​-creada​-por​-covid​-era​-evitable. Romberg, Raquel. Witchcraft and Welfare: Spiritual Capital and the Business of Magic in Modern Puerto Rico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Salamon, Gayle. “The Place Where Life Hides Away’: Merleau-Ponty, Fanon, and the Location of Bodily Being.” Differences 17, no. 2, (2006): 96–112. Saucedo, David. “El asesinato de Ángel Yael. Preguntas para la Guardia Nacional,” Infobae, May 30. 2022https:​//​www​.infobae​.com​/america​/mexico​/2022​/04​/30​/el​ -asesinato​-de​-angel​-yael​-preguntas​-para​-la​-guardia​-nacional​/. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Segato, Rita Laura. La Guerra contra las mujeres. Madrid: Traficante de sueños, 2016.

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———. Contra pedagogías de la crueldad. Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2018. Taussig, Michael. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study of Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Valencia, Sayak. Capitalismo Gore. Barcelona: Melusina, 2010. Weber, Max. Economía y sociedad. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1974. Zavala, Oswaldo. Los cárteles no existen. Barcelona: Malpaso, 2018. ———. “La seguridad nacional en México va más allá que la guerra contra el narco.” Washington Post, December 12, 2021. https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​/es​/post​ -opinion​/2021​/12​/12​/guerra​-contra​-narcotrafico​-mexico​-calderon​-amlo​-muertos​ -seguridad​/. ———. La guerra en las palabras. Una historia intelectual del “narco” en México (1975–2020). México: Penguin Random House, 2022.

PART III

Disclosing the Politics of Bodily Exploitation and Death Undergirding Neoliberal Rationality

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Chapter 6

Insecurity as a Form of Government Transformations in the Sphere of Work and the Politics of Bodies in Neoliberal Societies Pablo López Álvarez

Philosophical interpretations of neoliberalism have typically foregrounded the category of government, in the wake of the seminal analysis presented by Michel Foucault in his 1979 Collège de France course.1 In a context of profound economic, political, social, and cultural change, Foucault reexamines the reach and adequacy of his discipline/biopolitics framework for analyzing how behavior is managed in society. Providing a relatively novel view of a series of concepts such as government, freedom, and technologies of the self, Foucault offers a distinctive image of neoliberal rationality, one that continues to be a key reference for critical studies of neoliberalism. The notion of governmentality alludes to a whole raft of institutions, procedures, calculations and strategies for enabling the exercise of a concrete form of governmental power. Central to all its modalities is the idea of the conduct of conduct, the direction of the actions of oneself or of others, through processes in which the freedom of the governed subject is of decisive importance. As a power relation, government is a form of acting upon acting subjects, and insofar as they have the capacity to act.2 From this basis, Foucault’s account hopes to reveal the art of neoliberal government in all its complexity. In light of his analyses, neoliberalism is shown to be a conceptual model of actions and social relations that emphasizes the connection between personal autonomy and economic vitality and opposes the privileging of the 105

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state as the focal point of power relations. It entails a program of institutional design and restructuring that seeks to generalize the organizational model of the business enterprise and promote a specific form of subjectivity: the subject as entrepreneur of the self, bearer of human capital and guided by the values of initiative, competition, and versatility. Finally, a determinate ethos also follows from the new governmentality: an ethic of enterprise that encourages individuals to accept individual risk, avoid forms of social dependency, and develop prudential forms of conduct. The shift from work-value to human capital, from commodity to enterprise, and from exchange to competition defines the new rationality, in which Foucault perceives a general retreat of the normative-disciplinary model in advanced societies. Foucault’s interpretation of neoliberalism stems from his own philosophical trajectory and discursive context, and cannot be adequately discussed without reference to the political and intellectual situation in France and Europe in the year 1979, a moment significantly different from our own.3 Wendy Brown4 has highlighted the distance between Foucault’s analysis of neoliberalism and two perspectives as fundamental to the present-day gaze as the critical theory of capitalism and the theory of democracy. Nevertheless, the Foucauldian diagram of government, subjectivity and freedom offers a singular vantage point from which to confront the transformations of the neoliberal regime and its forms of power. Specifically, this article intends to draw on it to address a realm that was not an explicit object of the Foucauldian study of neoliberal rationality: the sphere of work and its relation to the government of bodies. Though typically disregarded in most studies on the body, subjectivity, and power in neoliberalism, the category of work allows for a sophisticated theoretical approach to contemporary social processes. Specifically, it enables us to understand how the extension of insecurity as a framework for personal autonomy reinforces relations of violence and domination, as well as experiences of suffering and subjective harm. In the same way, this perspective provides a means of identifying the emergence and reinforcement of (neo)disciplinary relations and forms of exclusion in the societies of contemporary neoliberalism. The principle of the “centrality of work” for critical social theory, especially in its philosophical, political, psychological and epistemological dimensions, is taken here as a point of departure.5 Narratives that have either neglected the subject of work or prematurely announced its “end” have tended to undermine philosophical reflection on the body and its relation to social domination. From a different standpoint, we argue that the study of contemporary forms of work organization is essential to grasp the character of neoliberal governmentality, its uneven development and its profound mutations. A comprehensive examination of these issues may help make

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sense of neoliberalism’s profound legitimation crisis (post-2008) and of the discursive and practical changes that follow. TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE SPHERE OF WORK: AUTONOMY AND SUBJECTIVATION Permanent transformation of the organization of work has formed a key part of neoliberal agenda ever since it came to be applied in practice during the seventies. Here, neoliberalism’s historical moment is typified by the terminal crisis of the mode of social organization that came to consolidate itself after World War II, that is, of the postwar pact that came to be associated with three decades of political stability and sustained economic growth in the capitalist societies of the West. Economic crises, overproduction, inflation, unemployment and stagnation contributed to the demise of a mode of regulation based on Keynesian fiscal policy, the Fordist model of work, and the directive or “command” function of the state. Incrementally, a broad range of policies of liberalization, austerity and deregulation emerged from the critique of the old, decaying Keynesian model. In the following decade of the eighties, coined by William Davies as the period of “combative neoliberalism”6 (1979–1989), the impact of such policies was felt most acutely in the sphere of production and industrial relations. Such reforms and novel solutions rendered the Fordist approach to regulating work obsolete, along with its specific approach to a number of processes aimed at rationalizing and scientifically managing labor, maintaining workforce discipline, regulating contracts with companies, and negotiating industrial disputes. The direct reference that the term “Fordism” makes to the automobile factories of Henry Ford underlines the centrality that industrial, assembly-line production and factory discipline had for the mode of regulation itself. Equally distinctive features of Fordism were the presence of union organizations and collective bargaining, a division of labor according to sex, the development of new patterns of consumption, and the framing of work within a relatively broad system of social welfare protections. Together, the aforementioned characteristics of the organization of work constitute the hegemonic mode of labor-regulation beginning in the first decades of the twentieth century. The Fordist model thus provided the fundamental paradigm for the sociology of work as well as for theories and movements critical of postliberal forms of capitalism, at least until the nineteen eighties. It is against the backdrop of this decaying model that the reform and restructuring of the field of work is justified. Reforms are associated with a growing need for diversifying and rendering production more flexible, guaranteeing the recuperation of economic growth, and encouraging workers’

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initiative and self-reliance. All these elements are crucial, interrelated parts of the new model. The just in time approach to organizing production demands an increase in the speed and precision of all work processes. These must meet set quality criteria and delivery times, all without committing process-slowing errors. The need to produce and distribute products at an exact moment in time and in the exact quantity, chasing a consumer preference that is as fickle as it is particular, creates an environment of “tight flow” production7 in which great attention is devoted to scrutinizing the commitment of workers to their job, and great emphasis is placed on rendering industrial relations more diverse and flexible. The model of routine, standardized, and externally examined work—generally characteristic of the Fordist model—is transformed by the need to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, by the new emphasis on self-initiative, and by the acquisition of attitudes and skills that go above and beyond those instilled in the traditional workplace. The new forms of work-organization envision a greater degree of worker participation, autonomy and empowerment in the work process and its oversight, hoping to take better advantage of the different skills and abilities of workers, as well as arriving at a more precise evaluation of each individual’s commitment and effort.8 A special feature of neoliberal governmentality today, the reorganization of industrial relations maximally intensifies the link between individualization and the process of conducting conduct. Overcoming the inefficiency and injustice attributed to the corporatist/Fordist work model means introducing new patterns of personalization across the board—not only at the level of organization, execution, and auditing of work, but also in the legitimating narratives that structure the worker’s subjective experience.9 Such individualizing processes cut across the standardized employment relations characteristic of Fordism, increasingly shaping both conventional forms of wage labor as well as forms of self-employment and casual labor. Establishing specific configurations of freedom and subjectivity, crucially, the new modes of management co-opt existing discourses in which the Fordist system of work and the bureaucracy of the social or welfare state are criticized. The burgeoning reform of industrial relations parallels the increase in highly critical accounts of the social organization of work, central to the cycle of protests beginning in May 1968 and reverberating throughout the whole of the seventies. In response, a wide range of social movements and currents propose and test reforms in the sphere of work, relying on individuals’ own relational abilities to explore different kinds of (self-)employment. As Sergio Bologna has pointed out,10 the reform of the work-process had much to do with the historic crisis of credibility regarding the previous model’s approach to organizing subjective experiences and career development based on a confluence of higher education, professional specialization,

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and indefinite contracts. The language of freedom and autonomy came to play a fundamental part in the historic struggle against factory hierarchy and discipline, and afforded students and workers a common language. At the same time, the conventional position of the trade unions distanced itself from the new demands, keeping its sights set on problems of “physical” risk, workplace accidents and wage demands. Problems pertaining to mental health, the relation between work and subjectivity, between psychotherapy and workplace alienation, were either sidelined as minor issues or treated as politically suspect elements during the great crisis of labor. Given such a context, it is hardly surprising that a collection of discourses promising to bridge the gap between work and self-realization, between outward professional commitment and the intimacy of the self, were able to take root. The managerial or administrative accounting of workplace discontent is crucial in the shift from one mode of regulating work to another. What was once regarded as the source of suffering and injustice—work—could in fact be repackaged and rebranded as a potentially limitless source of well-being, identity, and subjective recognition. The latter perspective should help shed light on the complexity of social change and its forms. It should also help us avoid overly schematic or nostalgic approaches to the topic of Fordism and post-Fordism. But it provides, furthermore, a useful foil for evaluating changes in the work model, especially the way in which the new organization of work both integrates and inverts the idea of freedom. There can be little doubt that the material consequences of having adopted the new approach to work, themselves exacerbated by the sorry state of the labor markets after the crises of 2008 and 2020–2022, cannot be accurately grasped by the aforementioned post-disciplinary language of difference, experimentation and self-realization. Neither can they be understood, however, without considering the role that subjectivity plays in them. The challenge is to think in and through such tensions, regarding them as part of a general regime of social insecurity that has become an essential factor for the neoliberal control of bodies. Isabell Lorey summarizes: “Instead of freedom and security, freedom and insecurity now form the new couple in neoliberal governmentality . . . both become the ideological precondition for governmental precarization.”11 Insecurity comes to define the subject’s surrounding environment. It is in this volatile place that subjects register their decisions and order their personal experience—not only of work, but of every aspect of lived experience. Its effects, however, are given specific expression in the world of work. Insecurity has a direct impact on productivity and work rate, and on the capacity of employees to counteract bad practices in the workplace. It contributes to their deteriorating health, to work-related stress and suffering, and

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to the emergence of new patterns of exploitation and exclusion, with highly important theoretical and political implications. POWER AND THE INTENSIFICATION OF WORK Grasping the effects of the new regime of work requires categories different from those used to legitimate or justify it. Particular attention ought to be paid to the socially specific form in which insecurity and its effects are expressed, from the perspectives of both power and suffering. Supposing the contemporary relevance of Foucault’s dictum, “there is no liberalism without a culture of danger,”12 we can also accept Lemke’s observation that “the proliferation and implementation of neoliberal forms of government has contributed to the production of insecurity and the cultivation of fear in ways that go well beyond the level Foucault observed during his lifetime.”13 The link between insecurity, fear, and domination ought to be understood in a specific way—first from the viewpoint of power relations in the workplace. From the outset, the logic of individualization and the responsible calculation of risk had been mobilized against a mode of regulating industrial relations in which unions, worker’s rights and collective bargaining played a decisive role. At stake in this struggle is, primarily, the protections and workrelated guarantees of the social welfare state, which regulated the length of the working day, salaries, working conditions and the formalization of social and economic rights. But the confrontation against organized labor power is also a question of how power is distributed across the relationship between workers and their employers. Accounting for this relationship formed a key part of twentieth-century efforts by unions and political movements to democratize the economy. The inclusion of the corporeal or bodily aspect of human dignity, as much as the reinforcing of collective self-determination and associative power, was central to the idea of “social right.”14 Opposed in these two respects to the relative de-commodification of labor power after the war, neoliberal reform programs advanced toward the minimization of security and dignity at work and the exacerbation of asymmetries of power across industrial relations. The latter dimension is obscured by the jargon of neoliberal capitalism—a language that avoids, at all costs, referring either to “work” or “workers,” preferring to opt instead for categories such as “collaboration” or “income support.” The new ways of organizing business—first, along the lines of net-businesses, subcontractors, or delocalized entities; second, along the lines of unconventional and informal ways of working (jobs with no work place or center)—effectively reduce the rate of union membership, making it harder for workers to organize collectively. To this we might add the persecution, prohibition, and restriction of the right to assembly and of

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union representation. The dependence of individual freedom on the material conditions of existence and its involvement in collective decision-making processes were once one of the hallmarks of republican and social thought, and today remain crucial for understanding the contemporary relationship between insecurity and domination. In such specific conditions, the individualization of work’s organization and evaluation (1) destroys workplace solidarity and punishes any show of mutual support. Equally, (2) it submits all workers to a process of ongoing evaluation in which they must permanently update their skills or aptitudes. As such, the workplace is turned into a space of insecurity and vulnerability in which the job position itself must be continually earned and re-earned. Third, (3) it reinforces relations of competition between workers, creating work environments in which personal achievement always comes at the cost of another colleague. Fourth, (4) it places great emphasis on reviews, ratings and evaluations made by internal and external clients or customers. Finally, (5) it legitimates exceedingly aggressive narratives and practices toward earlier examples of work culture and organization. Its union-busting narrative portrays the demands and rhetoric of workers’ organizations as anachronistic relics that harm the shared interests of employees and the businesses that employ them. The very notion of workplace regulation is regarded as an existential threat to growth and the business of work itself. While the connection between the managerial rhetoric of innovation and self-reliance, and notions of play and creativity are often highlighted it is equally important to note that such language is frequently expressed in terms of war and violence. A macho preference for confrontation and the survival of the fittest colors the neoliberal enterprise’s relation both toward its external economic competitors and its own employees. A general intensification of working activity follows from the destruction of the earlier institutional framework and its workplace protections. The latter is compounded by the increase in the job-seeking population and rising levels of competition between nations. Recent studies in sociology and the critical theory of work15 confirm that the working culture has seen a general acceleration in the rate of task completion in recent decades. Workers invest greater levels of effort per hour, are expected to meet greater numbers of deadlines and are (officially or not) expected to accept prolongation of the working day. Increased exertion is required both from a physical, as well as a psychological, emotional, or affective standpoint. Workers must retrain themselves with increasing speed and frequency, arming themselves with the most up-to-date skills demanded by the “learning curve” economy. They must take on an increasingly diverse array of tasks and show flexibility. In addition to their agreed-on duties, they must also work on supervising themselves, correcting mistakes and continually improving their performance. Due to developments

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in information and communication technology, the line separating the start of the work day from its end becomes increasingly blurry, leading employers to assume greater availability from their employees. The degree to which work is intensified varies according to several distinct parameters including gender and the kind of activity performed, with such changes affecting women and young workers in particular. But the process of intensification is a global phenomenon, that cuts across different social strata, extending its reach to industries not yet affected by rising precarity (the second defining characteristic of the present condition of work). Having said this, its spread ought to be seen as the result of deliberate decisions made by organizations and institutions, rather than a side effect of automation or IT systems. As a process, intensification is as historical as the subjective harm and suffering it causes. The same can be said for workplace policies of self-evaluation, whose consequences are inseparable from the institutional framework to which they owe their existence. Generalized uncertainty, fear, and defenselessness—mainstays of the contemporary work regime—oblige the subject to accept demands that are potentially limitless in duration and intensity. Intensification places aggressive demands on space and time, but also demands permanent action from the subject upon itself. This is the particular form in which subjectivity is inscribed and operates within the new regime of government. Today’s managerial working culture regards the behavior, personality, and personal preference of candidates as key indicators of their employability, as important as their official qualifications and skills, if not more so. In this way, workers are responsible not only for what they know or are capable of doing, but also for what they actually are: for their attitude, involvement, commitment, stamina, and motivation. Though the number and character of contracts or relations between employers and employees are certainly varied, as has been pointed out, they all rely on a key function, namely on the ability of the worker to intervene actively upon his or her own behavioral dispositions. While the latter can be formulated positively using the managerial terms of “commitment,” “merit,” and “passion,” it involves, above all, a special way of constructing an idea of guilt or responsibility. Transferring a punitive image to the world of work, individuals must bear responsibility and accept punishment not only for deciding upon a given course of action, but also for decisions made with respect to their own personality, for deciding who they have chosen to be. In a context in which mistakes are regarded as symptoms of a worker’s lack of commitment toward the company and his or her colleagues, where each product is perfectly traceable within a sequence of procedures and checks,16 the whole jargon of quality control is mobilized in order to control and punish any drop in the work rate. Blyton and Turnbull17 speak of “management through blame.”18 Fundamentally, under conditions of high unemployment,

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where subsistence isn’t guaranteed and the threat of poverty looms, every element of the new business ethos—“employability,” being a “team-player,” being “proactive,” exercising “responsible autonomy,” “self-competition,” showing “creativity and initiative,” “sacrifice,” “adaptation” or having the right “mindset”—amount to a specific set of corporeal demands that are essential for increasing the level of productivity and flexibility of working bodies. By this token, the post-Fordist dispositif or management device does not imply a static, exclusive and scientifically approved technique for controlling bodies, managing time, and completing tasks—as per the disciplinary model of producing docile bodies. But the concepts and strategies with which it hopes to supersede the coercive moments within Fordism produce their own, amplified forms of control, surveillance, and coercion. Owing precisely to their emphasis on subjectivity, that is, on the subject’s self-esteem, preferences, and pleasure, such techniques presuppose concrete forms of subjective harm and suffering. On Mark Fisher’s view: “If the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism had its psychic casualties, then post-Fordism has innovated whole new modes of stress. Instead of the elimination of bureaucratic red tape promised by neoliberal ideologues, the combination of new technology and managerialism has massively increased the administrative stress placed on workers, who are now required to be their own auditors (which by no means frees them of the attentions of external auditors of many kinds).”19 Significantly, the drive to actively mobilize the intellectual capacities of workers and involve them in processes of data compilation and feedback results in an extraordinary level of standardization and regulation of the productive process and quality control.20 SUFFERING AND OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH The intensification of work has significant effects on health in the workplace. The demand for increased performance and the fear of unemployment contributes to the emergence of places of overwork, of quasi-pathogenic environments in which the risk of contracting both physical and mental illness is ever more pronounced. Though occasionally, attention has been paid to the subject of addiction to work itself, to the figure of the “workaholic,” it is also true that cases of muscular, cardiovascular and bone-related illnesses, as well as conditions of depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue, all figure more prominently among those working in less qualified job positions, among those for whom a libidinal relation to work or positive view of stress is unthinkable. The post-Fordist model of work, with its exigencies and its imposed patterns of space, time, effort and learning, exposes subjects to significant levels of

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physical and psychological pressure without these same employees ever knowing if they are capable of withstanding such requirements. The workers’ health and stability are no longer based on the pursuit of a steady career path, but obtained only against or in spite of the demands of work, which tends to dissolve subjective identity and creep into every moment of life. The phenomena of burnout, karoshi, or workplace suicide, unrelated to any prior diagnosis of mental illness and occurring even in non-precarious sectors, are all acute examples of the new work culture and organization. If, in the Fordist model, the relation between health and work was confined to workplace accidents and profession-specific illnesses, changes in the post-Fordist configuration raise questions over the permanent relationship between work and threats or risks of a psychosocial character.21 Problems of mental health and illness take on a central role in the sphere of the workplace in general, as well as concrete ways. Mental health problems are among the prime motivating factors behind prolonged absences from work. Specifically, “time pressure” and “overload of work” are cited as the main threats to mental well-being in the European Union.22 Questions regarding the workforce and mental well-being, as much as concerns raised over the use of pharmaceuticals (anxiolytics, antidepressants, sedatives) cannot be ignored if one is to begin to account for the reality of the body-at-work today, and the same applies to the combined use of other drugs as a means of adjusting to the fragmented and discontinuous patterns of time and effort that characterize the post-Fordist model, in what Marta Echaves has called “trust in chemical piety.”23 Here, the governable employee also appears as a pharmacological subject. Referring to some of the earlier examples mentioned, Dejours’s psychodynamic viewpoint allows one to discern some of the fundamental modes of production of social suffering and their relation to the new model of organizing work. A key source of suffering for workers derives from the need to take on increasingly demanding jobs, accepting physical requirements—times, skills, work rates—that reduce the likelihood of doing a good job and place fear at the heart of the working experience. The increasingly precarious character of industrial relations today results in uncertain and discontinuous career paths in which the relation between work and identity is broken and any consideration of its social function forgotten. The relationship that workers develop toward their work is reduced to a question of mere survival, an aim which is, in any case, undermined by a working model in which remuneration becomes an ever more fragmented, casual, and occasional affair. The kind of harm produced in such cases refers, above all, to the worker’s self-esteem, subjective identity, and sense of social belonging. Further instances of suffering include a lack of official recognition for services rendered, permanent surveillance and micromanagement, meaningless tasks, a lack of hope for career advancement, mistrustful working environments, exposure to bullying

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and harassment, and neglect of workers’ voices. The principle of competition encourages the restriction and concealment of information and obliges workers to lie constantly about the standard of their work.24 Moreover, an additional element of suffering is added when workers find themselves obliged to commit or tolerate deeds that contradict their ethical beliefs and violate the norms of their chosen profession.25 The key element in Dejours’ argument, however, goes beyond simply identifying the origins of suffering in the contemporary workplace. It refers to a distinct sphere, focused not so much on suffering per se, but on the array of reactions and defensive adaptations that subjects use in response to suffering. Under current working conditions, workers who experience their contractual relation as a source of suffering feel obliged to prevent the public expression of their suffering, as a critical dimension of the process of psychic defense. Nevertheless, the weakening of the capacity to perceive and express suffering also impedes the capacity for recognizing the suffering of others, hence the rise of general indifference and callousness toward suffering and workplace domination.26 The latter offers a distinctive viewpoint for analyzing the relation between fear, suffering and violence, which extends beyond the sphere of work. The lived experience of suffering is such that it modifies its own perception of itself and the responses that such changes imply. Fear and suffering do not present themselves merely as side effects of violence. They also appear as symptoms of an increased tolerance or desensitization toward the kind of work-based violence exerted on oneself and others, toward the drastic measures required for managing and molding the hand of labor to new contexts of production. Since our reaction to suffering affects our normative principles and the way in which we confront harm both collectively and individually, it becomes ever more difficult to judge or see work-based harm as something unjust. As such, room is made for the banalization or downplaying of workbased suffering, as is the case with workplace suicide. Notably, Dejours’s theorization bears affinity with one of the key tenets in contemporary studies on governmentality, namely the picture of the governed subject as an active subject, whose experience is more than a mere processing of externally imposed patterns of conduct and forms of domination. The subject is continually deciding for itself, mobilizing its whole psychosomatic profile, and reacting appropriately to its changing environment. This approach also confronts managerial rhetoric by emphasizing the link between fear, violence, and suffering at work, and confirms the central role that post-Fordist work accords to disciplinary and self-disciplinary policy. Consolidated under such negative conditions, as Dejours points out, is “a system of self-administered domination that broadly supersedes the disciplinary results once obtained via conventional means of control.”27 Above all, this examination of the means of mitigating suffering makes it possible to take a

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different approach to the fact that the subject can perceive those actions that he/she undertakes within a coercive workplace structure in terms of free decision. The precise advantage of this view is that it recognizes the ambiguity of contemporary forms of governing work. VALUE AND EXCLUSION Examining the organizational and discursive models of the body-at-work can help to shed light on the link between neoliberal forms of governing conduct, suffering, and social domination. For the political dimension of the analysis, the effects of suffering and domination do not follow from a merely negative existential condition of precarity as the simple absence of security and labor rights. On the contrary, such effects are bound up with the positive definition of subjectivity and experience. This aspect also extends to the decision-making processes on public policy, on welfare and employment, in areas where the specific historical connection between work, new forms of discipline, and exclusion is confirmed. As indicated, for Foucault the idea of “enterprise” appears as a common matrix for the various rationales and governmental techniques of neoliberal societies. He observes that work, school, the university, hospitals, and the system of social security itself are all potential candidates for being redesigned along the lines of entrepreneurialism and the notion of human capital. Crucially, the locus of the enterprise-form is displaced to subjectivity itself, which, within a complex social framework, acts according to strategies, tactics, and cost-benefit calculations. Foucault’s proposition corresponds to Becker and Schultz’s “economization of life” model, which in turn captures a significant shift within capitalist industrial relations occurring even before the great crisis of the seventies. Nevertheless, such a model has also been subject to changes in the transition toward an increasingly financialized version of capitalism, one that gives rise to new forms of government and subjective self-government. Michel Feher provides an in-depth account of such changes, that have directly affected the public management of work.28 The management approaches enlisted by financialized capitalism condition both businesses and state institutions in new ways. More than maximizing profit, the daily activity of the enterprise is oriented toward expanding and publicizing its capacity for constant valorization. Having a good reputation and the esteem of potential investors is key, as is its ability to access credit and to make attractive promises about future returns and valorizing investor’s assets. Similarly, states also compete to see who can achieve the most favorable conditions for attracting investment and assuring bondholders that their money is securely placed. Like the enterprise, under financialized conditions,

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the state is more concerned about credit and confidence than collecting tax or raising productivity. Ultimately, states are forced to adopt “compatible” fiscal prescriptions or policies, which often involve reducing labor costs, limiting public spending, adopting pro-market tax policies, and reinforcing private property rights (intellectual). The latter is felt even at the lowest level of government: in the absence of job security and with the state unable or unwilling to guarantee social provision, the introduction of private credit takes on a decisive role in the new subjective economy. Reflecting such changes, the subject of the new governmental regime assumes a different character. It is often noted that debt has a disciplinary function, and that its generalization has restored relations of dependency. At the same time, however, the credit- or debt-based configuration gives the theory of human capital and enterprising subject a new meaning. As Feher indicates, turning away from commercial profit toward stock value means replacing the character of the profit-seeking entrepreneur with that of the credit-seeking asset manager. Caught up in the new economy, the lives and fortunes of individuals depend less on their profitability than on their capacity to attract credit. Displaying the correct individual rating is key: as someone who inspires confidence, as a sign of the prestige and good standing of one’s personal brand. However, obtaining and maintaining one’s rating is just as important: employees are induced to work incessantly to increase their appreciation, or at least to avoid their depreciation. From the schema of neoliberal governmentality, one feature stands out. The business of governing individuals increasingly depends on how overarching value criteria are defined. Since the free choices of individuals adhere or take place within the given set of values, their conduct can be redirected by modifying these same criteria. As noted earlier, the neoliberal process culminates in an acute form of self-discipline according to the terms of evaluation and calculation. However, an additional element must also be mentioned. The new economic reality makes it impossible to provide general coverage or protection against risk and to sustain individuals within the confines of the competitive economy. The conditions needed to guarantee the repayment of debt, the state’s capacity for financing, and its international rating, often come with prescriptions for job-market and public spending reforms. These measures cannot be implemented without damaging the material conditions of existence and the social protections of individuals. This shift in the relation between states and individuals marks a break with the principle of social responsibility and an acceptance of the privatization of risk, especially in a corporeal sense. When combined with a situation of industrial overcapacity and a low demand for labor, this process leads to an explosion in the ranks of the unemployable and discredited, of the surplus population whose mere

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presence is as inescapable as it is harmful for the self-image of states and local authorities. Many contemporary social and labor policies can be identified by their shared need to displace, hide or simply negate the existence of the discredited masses. Unemployment figures are massaged so that the unmotivated or those who reject a vacancy for not meeting their criteria do not make it onto the books. Benefit claimants are put under immense pressure to take on precarious work. Recourse is made to cost-killing policies in which “undesirable” employees are subjected to physical and psychological harassment, sometimes to the point of suicide. Young workers are encouraged to emigrate, while the movement of other individuals and populations are drastically limited. Pressured to return to work in the absence of benefits and pensions, the unemployed find themselves in the kind of situation that Feher documents. Once an overnight security guard, the fifty-seven-year-old Brian McArdle, received disability benefits after suffering a stroke that left him paralyzed and aphasic. In 2012, following a program of social spending cuts, he was declared “fit to work” after being “assessed” by the government-contracted private agency Atos Healthcare. The day after he was struck off the disability benefit register, McArdle died from a second stroke. “Far from being the only victim of Cameron’s war on pension abuse, Brian McArdle is merely one out of 1,300 people who passed away soon after being tested by Atos Healthcare; strokes and suicides were among the most frequent causes of death.”29 The latter trend is entirely consistent with the development (since the eighties) of workfare, or forced work programs that, taking the notion of “employability” as their point of departure, come to replace the old rhetoric of “welfarism.” Under conditions of economic deregulation, the new ways of governing conduct steer the actions of individuals by establishing a link between receiving social benefits and entering the world of precarious work. The neoliberal bureaucracy of the social security system aims to instill its values—above all, the duty of work—in the impoverished population. In doing so it evaluates the moral fiber or rating of benefits claimants, who require constant supervision according to rigid protocols. In Jamie Peck’s terms: “In contrast to the welfarist logic of providing temporary ‘shelters’ outside the labor market for designated social groups, this workfarist logic dictates that targeted social groups are driven into the labor market, where they are expected to remain, notwithstanding systemic problems of under-employment, low pay, and exploitative work relations . . . Workfarist measures do not so much raise the level of employability across the labor market as a whole as increase the rate of exploitation in its lower reaches.”30 The rise of workfare strategies does not imply a return to older disciplinary forms of spatiotemporal control. Rather, they ought to be seen as a specific

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expression of the principles of “activation,” commitment and personal responsibility, hence the negative media portrayal of benefit claimants and general concern about individuals and their “employability.” But the balance between generalized social insecurity and governmental security is established in a highly complex form and demands a reorientation of state power. Rather than any withdrawal, this leads to the hypertrophy of state power. This point has been particularly emphasized by Loïc Wacquant.31 With the normalization of privatized or dissocialized labor comes the specter of social disenfranchisement. The working classes become frustrated at their inability to pass on any gains made to the next generation, especially in those sectors that lack the cultural capital for accessing the more privileged parts of the labor market. The response of the state institution to such changes to wage labor is the amputation of the economic arm of the state, the restriction of its social function, and the extension of its punitive reach. Giving concrete form to social insecurity depends on intensifying particular kinds of state security, as well as on diversifying and commercializing security mechanisms. As Thomas Lemke underlines: “The ‘privatization’ of the production of security does not lead in any way to a demise of regulatory and steering competences of the state; rather, it has to be regarded as a reorganization or a restructuring of governmental technologies.”32 Specifically, the language and modus operandi of the state precisely mirror the cognitive shift of the new governmentality, which shows itself to be perfectly compatible with the violent affirmation of specific kinds of state activity. The political transition from welfare to workfare constitutes a key feature of the regime of contemporary power.33 Recognizing this shift can help to address commonly held views about the state’s supposed “retreat” under neoliberal conditions and about the extent to which freedom matters to contemporary techniques of governance. Nancy Fraser’s considerations on the blurring of the boundaries between exploitation and expropriation, between the free subjects of exploitation and the dependent subjects of expropriation, “workers who used to be merely exploited are now expropriated too,”34 coincide with this chapter’s approach to work and its contemporary transformations, and raise, once again, questions of social freedom and the production of superfluous populations considered unfit for exploiting labor power. CONCLUDING REMARKS As part of a broader cartography, the aforementioned elements ought to serve as aids for thinking about the character and real implications of the neoliberal configuration and its body-governing techniques. It is common knowledge35 that the neoliberal form of rationality is defined essentially by its adaptive,

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hybrid, and changing character. This chapter has maintained that studying contemporary ways of organizing and conceptualizing work offers novel perspectives from which to grasp the material consequences of the broader drive toward individualization, autonomy, and valorization. It has hoped to show how a) generalized government due to general insecurity relates to b) the production of suffering, the reactivation of neodisciplinary modes of power, and the intensification of social exclusion. From a philosophical viewpoint, the latter helps us to ponder freedom’s relation to the material conditions of its exercise, among which is the recognition of the interdependent character of bodies. Judith Butler asks “If I build a notion of ‘autonomy’ on the basis of the denial of this sphere of a primary and unwilled physical proximity with others, then am I denying the social conditions of my embodiment in the name of autonomy?”36 The issue of work-based suffering relates, in this sense, to a number of pertinent reflections toward a contemporary philosophy of the body: (1) the body is constituted according to spatiotemporal criteria and overlapping sensory foundations, both of which may change; (2) the body is molded by the production of habits and practical intellect; this involves a process of bodily materialization that is institutionally determined; (3) the body is inscribed in a network of power and counterpower, but also in a network of dependencies that take precedence over any example of autonomy; (4) the imposition of extreme and contradictory demands may result in bodily harm, as is the case in many working environments; and (5) the body is not the passive object of an external construction; it expresses a unity of action and is capable of altering the relations in which it is inscribed. The different levels of crisis affecting advanced neoliberal societies have changed how neoliberalism is organized, perceived, and legitimated or justified. The early vision of autonomy, economic growth, and universal well-being has given way to bellicose rhetoric, exceptionalism, and a scorched-earth picture of scarcity and blame. Work is just one area in which such transformations are rendered palpable. In this scenario, it is possible to conceive of the problems of work as revolving essentially around its obsolescence, its automation and the potential liberation of time that could follow from it. If we adopt a different point of view, however, accepting the difficulty of envisioning a post-work society37 and locating the cause of suffering and exclusion in the combination of overexploitation and underemployment,38 then an adequate response must also adopt a different approach, one that defends the unavailability of bodies and the guarantees of their existence, the democratization of work, the politicization of the question of work-related health, and the protection of labor rights as fundamental rights.39 Such perspectives—which ultimately depend on loosening capital’s grip

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on productive processes—will prove decisive in the context opened up by today’s crises and resistances. NOTES 1. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics. 2. Foucault, “The Subject and Power.” 3. López Álvarez, “El ultimo umbral. Foucault y el neoliberalismo.” 4. Brown, Undoing the Demos. 5. Dejours & Deranty, “The Centrality of Work.” 6. Davies, “The New Neo-liberalism.” 7. Durand, The Invisible Chain. 8. Lahera, “‘Conquistando los corazones y las almas de los trabajadores’: El aseguramiento de la calidad total como nuevo dispositivo disciplinario.” 9. Crespo and Serrano, “La psicologización del trabajo: la desregulación del trabajo y el gobierno de las voluntades.” 10. Bologna, The Rise of the European Self-Employed Workforce, 81–82. 11. Lorey, State of Insecurity. Government of the Precarious, 64. 12. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 67. 13. Lemke, “The Risks of Security: Liberalism, Biopolitics, and Fear,” 66. 14. Supiot, “Grandeur and Misery of the Social State.” 15. Burchell et al., Working Conditions in the European Union: Working Time and Work Intensity; Pérez Zapata, Trabajo sin fin, salud insostenible; Dejours et al., The Return of Work in Critical Theory. 16. Lahera, “Conquistando los corazones y las almas de los trabajadores,” 21. 17. 1992, 65. 18. Blyton and Turnbull, Reassessing Human Resource Management, 65. 19. Fisher, “The Privatisation of Stress,” 127. 20. Of special interest on this point is the aforementioned study by Arturo Lahera (2006), which focuses on the case of machine tool manufacturing companies in the Basque Country. 21. Pérez Zapata, Trabajo sin límites, salud insostenible, 201. 22. Labour Force Survey, 2020. 23. Echaves, “Confiad en la piedad química.” 24. Dejours, Trabajo y sufrimiento, 46. 25. Dejours et al., The Return of Work in Critical Theory, 157. 26. Dejours, Trabajo y sufrimiento, 65. 27. Dejours, Trabajo y sufrimiento, 68. 28. Feher, “Self-Appreciation; or, the Aspirations of Human Capital.” 29. Feher, “Disposing of the Discredited: A European Project,” 20. 30. Peck, “The Rise of the Workfare State,” 85. 31. In particular: Wacquant, “Three Steps to a Historical Anthropology of Actually Existing Neoliberalism.” 32. Lemke, “The Risks of Security: Liberalism, Biopolitics, and Fear,” 69.

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33. Vega, “Acumulación y subjetivación en el neoliberalismo: Estado, workfare y discurso gerencial.” 34. Fraser, “Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography—From Exploitation to Expropriation.” 35. Peck, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. 36. Butler, Precarious Life, 26. 37. Deranty, “Post-Work Society as an Oxymoron.” 38. Benanav, Automation and the Future of Work. 39. Mantouvalou, “Are Labour Rights Human Rights?”

REFERENCES Benanav, Aaron. Automation and the Future of Work. London: Verso, 2020. Blyton, Paul, and Peter Turnbull. Reassessing Human Resource Management. London: Sage, 1992. Bologna, Sergio. The Rise of the European Self-Employed Workforce. Milan-Udine: Mimesis, 2018. Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books, 2015. Burchell, Brendan et al. Working Conditions in the European Union: Working Time and Work Intensity, Dublin: EuroFound, 2009. Butler, Judith. Precarious Life. London: Verso, 2004. Crespo, Eduardo and Serrano, Amparo. “La psicologización del trabajo: la desregulación del trabajo y el gobierno de las voluntades.” Teoría y crítica de la psicología, 2, 2012. Davies, William. “The New Neo-Liberalism.” New Left Review 101, 2016. Dejours, Chistophe. Trabajo y sufrimiento. Madrid: Modus Laborandi, 2009. Dejours, Chistophe, and Jean-Philippe Deranty. “The Centrality of Work.” Critical Horizons 11.2, 2010. Dejours, Chistophe, Jean-Phillipe Deranty, Emmanuel Renault, and Nicholas H. Smith. The Return of Work in Critical Theory: Self, Society, Politics. Columbia University Press, 2018. Deranty, Jean-Philippe. “Post-Work Society as an Oxymoron.” European Journal of Social Theory, 25(3), 2022. Durand, Jean-Pierre. The Invisible Chain. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007. Echaves, Marta. “Confiad en la piedad química.” Working Dead: Escenarios del postrabajo. Barcelona: La Virreina, 2019. Feher, Michel. “Self-Appreciation; or, the Aspirations of Human Capital.” Public Culture, 21–21, 2009. ———. “Disposing of the Discredited: A European Project,” Talk for the Neoliberalism and Biopolitics Conference, Berkeley, 2015. Fisher, Mark. “The Privatisation of Stress,” Soundings, 48, 2011. Foucault, Michel. “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 4, 1982. ———. The Birth of Biopolitics. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.

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Fraser, Nancy. “Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography—From Exploitation to Expropriation: Historic Geographies of Racialized Capitalism,” Economic Geography, 94:1, 2018. Lahera Sánchez, Arturo. “‘Conquistando los corazones y las almas de los trabajadores’: El aseguramiento de la calidad total como nuevo dispositivo disciplinario,” en J. J. Castillo: El trabajo recobrado: Una evaluación del trabajo realmente existente en España, Madrid, Miño y Dávila Editores, 2005. Lemke, Thomas. “The Risks of Security: Liberalism, Biopolitics, and Fear.” In: Vanessa Lemm and Miguel Vatter (eds.), The Government of Life. Foucault, Biopolitics, and Neoliberalism. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014. López Álvarez, Pablo. “El ultimo umbral. Foucault y el neoliberalismo.” In José Luis Moreno Pestaña (ed.), Ir a clase con Foucault. Madrid: Akal, 2021. Lorey, Isabell. State of Insecurity. Government of the Precarious. London: Verso, 2015. Mantouvalou, Virginia. “Are Labour Rights Human Rights?.” European Labour Law Journal, vol. 3, no 2, 2012. Peck, Jamie. “The Rise of the Workfare State.” Kurswechsel, 3, 2003. ———. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford University Press, 2010. Pérez Zapata, Óscar. Trabajo sin límites, salud insostenible: La intensificación del trabajo del conocimiento (PhD Thesis). Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2015. Supiot, Alain. “Grandeur and Misery of the Social State.” New Left Review, 82, 2013. Vega, Sergio. “Acumulación y subjetivación en el neoliberalismo: Estado, workfare y discurso gerencial.” Res Publica 22.2, 2019. Wacquant, Loïc. “Three Steps to a Historical Anthropology of Actually Existing Neoliberalism.” Social Anthropology, 20, 2012.

Chapter 7

Making a Living, Producing a Dignified Death Experiences of Precarity, Expectations for the Future, and Processes of Political Subjectivization María Inés Fernández Álvarez

Her right knee on the ground, Celia1 crouches forward to show how she and her fellow workers sell merchandise in the side streets of the Once neighborhood, one of the areas in the City of Buenos Aires with the highest concentration of street vendors. Words could not convey the wear and tear undergone by the bodies exposed to heat, cold, and the street: knees hurting after hours against the ground, skins spotted by the scorching summer sun, bodies chilled by the cold winter outdoor temperatures. Hailing from Trujillo, Perú, Celia is among the thousands of vendors who were expelled from their place of work by the police in January 2017 during a repressive operation which included arrests and seizures of merchandise, and which gave rise to a process of collective organization supporting the right to work in public spaces. Though the goal of returning street vending to major avenues was not attained, and persecution by law enforcement continues to this day, over time, side streets became the space in which these street vendors could make a living. Precarious working conditions, embodied in ailments and chronic diseases—often rendered invisible—as well as everyday experiences of police control, contrast sharply with the way in which those who make a living mainly through street vending define and describe their activity. To sell in the public space is an option plagued by uncertainty, yet still preferable to 125

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facing the current labor market, that is, facing the impossibility of finding a job and the dearth of actual work available to them. If street vending is an activity constantly under threat and suspicion, it is also a way of making a living which is defended and vindicated, highlighted by the deployment of a special plasticity to “make do”—creating an opportunity to generate an income where there was none. For this reason, street vendors often recognize and vindicate themselves as buscas, a way of life they describe with pride. This pride of being a busca is directly associated with their ability to make a living, control their schedules and ways of working, manage their income, and be independent. In this way, the aspirations and expectations of a better life combine ideas of autonomy and concepts of economic progress with forms of social protection which nurture dynamics of collective organization. The study of aspirations and expectations for the future has garnered interest in the anthropological analysis of processes of crisis and uncertainty, as well as in discussions of our understanding of neoliberalism.2 In particular, examining aspirations and expectations for the future has helped problematize romantic and poverty-focused interpretations of the so-called “popular economies” by exploring how aspirations of economic success and expectations of individual progress are combined with communal and collective practices3 or the coercive and disciplining nature of individual aspirations of entrepreneurial success which upholds—and is upheld by—the production of regulations governing the informal economy.4 This chapter aims to broaden that analysis by exploring how aspirations and expectations for the future shape processes of political experimentation which model dynamics of confrontation on various ways of making a living in structurally precarious circumstances. My analysis finds inspiration in research I have carried out since 2015, centered around a collaborative ethnography of union organization processes of the street vendors of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area enrolled in the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy (UTEP).5 I use the concept of “making a living” in the same sense as Susana Narotzky and Niko Besnier6; that is, the set of practices and relationships which enable the reproduction of life in a broad sense. These include mercantilized relationships, but go beyond them to encompass those which are commonly deemed “uneconomical” or “unproductive.” Against the abstract models used to consider the economy, I take “ordinary” practices as a starting point in a historically and culturally situated ethnographic approach examining the diversity of practices and processes involved in the various ways of “producing dignified lives” for oneself and for future generations, not only in the material dimension, but also as regards the meanings, values, and notions we develop to produce that materiality. In the same vein, Benoit de l’Estoile7 resorts to the concept of

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oikonomia understood as “household management” to underscore the political, moral, and affective aspects involved in the everyday means of sustaining life. de l’ Estoile prioritizes politics in the study of the ways of (re)producing life generally associated with “the economy,” and advances a holistic understanding of how people produce and find meaning in life as a whole.8 This entails including the production of activities carried out to ensure their reproduction in material terms as well as in the aspects which define a good or dignified life.9 This chapter is based on ethnographic situations examined during fieldwork carried out over the last two years—a context, of course, marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. They also revisit, however, a longer-term knowledge developed through collaborative research with union organizations of street vendors. Upon that foundation, in the following pages I will explore how future aspirations and projections shape dynamics of political experimentation which are based on processes of displacement and bodily reconfiguration in the experience undergone.10 I focus on analyzing how these dynamics become interrelated and enable processes of political subjectivization in which embodied experiences of affliction, suffering, and persecution become dominant. I posit that aspirations and projections for the future intertwine ideas of autonomy and economic progress with experiences of suffering, violence, and precarity, from which affective-political bonds are built that drive and sustain collective dynamics, giving rise to a process of dispute over the socially and politically approved ways of making a living. With that goal, the first part of the chapter is devoted to exploring how experiences of systematic persecution by law enforcement shape aspirations and expectations for the future, foregrounding the importance of forms of social protection which make it possible to “work in peace.” I analyze how these aspirations are translated into a process for demanding the recognition of street vending as work, as well as its regulation, which entails challenging the right to appropriate the income produced by the city. Then, I study how future aspirations and expectations as regards what constitutes a dignified life—acts such as burying our dead and ensuring access to healthcare—shape the production of care practices which fall under what I have described as “collective well-being strategies.”11 Finally, I explore how these practices reveal a process for producing value which is simultaneously mercantile and non-mercantile.

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TO WORK IN PEACE On Saturday, February 20th, 2021, while selling products in the Greater Buenos Aires Area, Esteban and Pedro were arrested on charges of armed robbery. Between the moment they left their home and the arrest, they had been going from door to door selling paella pans—their habitual merchandise—together with other types of cookware, such as pizza and pie pans. They also stopped at a convenience store, where they bought something to drink, and warned a neighbor that she had left the keys to her house outside, hanging from the keyhole. They were not at all surprised by the arrival of the patrol car in which they were taken to the station—it is not out of the ordinary for law enforcement agents to approach them while they work, but rather, part of them and their colleagues’ everyday routine. Some sell cookware, some sell potted plants from local nurseries, and some, for age- or healthrelated reasons, prefer to sell spices, which are not as heavy a load. In the best-case scenario, these encounters result in a mere “verification of identity.” Sometimes, they are resolved by means of an informal payment to the police, perhaps resulting in a temporary work permit. In other instances, the goods they sell are seized. Occasionally, these arrests can last hours or several days, and at times, as in the case of Esteban and Pedro, can even result in charges for a crime the workers did not commit. Although “being a busca” is usually defined as a way of making a living in which freedom is a highly valued attribute (freedom in terms of schedule, relationships, ways of working, and control over one’s income), vending in public spaces is simultaneously a precarious activity carried out under uncertain conditions—unease and suspicion are inherent to the experience. This is the primary reason Esteban and Pedro reached out to the Branch of Public Space Workers of Movimiento Evita-UTEP (hereinafter, “the Branch”) through their contact with the Cooperative of United Vendors of the San Martín Railway, one of the organizations which gave rise to this space. Created in 2014, the Cooperative is comprised of men and women who sell miscellaneous goods in the intercity railway line connecting downtown Buenos Aires with the suburbs in the northeast, which Pedro and Esteban often use to commute. It was during those train journeys shared with other buscas that Pedro and Estaban heard about the process of union organization being pursued together with other groups of vendors, with the goal of achieving recognition of street vending as legitimate work, creating ways of regulating the activity, and leading to improvement of living standards. For street vendors, persecution by law enforcement agents is an embodied experience which renders them buscas: accounts of situations of seizures or arrests, and the experience of criminalization—effective or potential—are

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among the most salient features of the way in which the activity is described and in which their own lives are reconstructed. In Branch meetings or in events with other social organizations or government officials, mentions of these situations, both firsthand and experienced through other buscas, are systematically brought up when discussing the decision to create a cooperative, join the Branch or become part of the UTEP. In the case of those who sell on means of transportation—particularly trains, where vending is an activity passed down across generations12—the reconstruction of these trajectories includes recurring references to instances of systematic violence as part of one’s experience or that of one’s parents or grandparents. For “old” or “lifelong” vendors, this goes back to the practices of “cooking up charges,” which would deprive them of their freedom for several days, and even for weeks, and which affected them both systematically and intermittently.13 This practice dates back to those who started vending at a very early age, during the last military dictatorship or the post-dictatorship years of the early 1980s. In particular, the process of railway privatization in the 1990s14 is mentioned as a period during which resisting so as to “not disappear from the train” became very difficult. In these cases, the dominant experience references the harassment by the security staff hired by the new companies managing the railways, and corporate attempts to create vendors’ cooperatives which, in practice, were covert modalities of outsourcing. Accounts of these situations usually include anecdotes about strategies used to evade police persecution or prevent seizures, narrated as personal or collective feats: discarding the box of merchandise from the moving train for another vendor to pick up later, or creating codes to announce the arrival of security staff. In the case of the youngest vendors, accounts mention childhood memories of arrested relatives, or nights waiting for a father detained for making a living on the train, as a vendor shared in tears during the first inter-railway meeting held in 2017. While these practices are long-standing, expulsive and repressive actions aimed at street vendors have surged in the last few years, particularly in major urban centers such as the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, intensifying persistent forms of police control which combine violent and arbitrary practices against this activity, defined as a public problem linked to “illegality.”15 In particular, during the term of the Cambiemos alliance (in 2016, Mauricio Macri became president, and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta was elected mayor of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires), these actions proved fundamental in a broader strategy of “ordering the public space,” associated with a rapid process of privatization favoring the dynamics of capital accumulation. This was legitimized by a public discourse in turn amplified by mass media linking street vending to illegality and organized crime. It was against this backdrop that, as was mentioned above, the processes of union organization accelerated and multiplied, demanding the recognition of street vending as work and the

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right to use the public space for the (re)production of life. These demands implicitly entail a dispute over public spaces and the right to a share of the income produced by the city,16 thus addressing the dynamics of segregation and privatization of public space characteristic of life in major urban centers.17 This segregation and privatization of public space resorts to ideas of “cleanliness”18 to legitimize ways of criminalizing street vending,19 enabling processes of dispossession that directly affect those who make a living mainly through street vending. For this reason, when reconstructing the story of her cooperative, Silvia, a leader of the Branch, usually begins by stating that the term “United” was chosen by the members based on their awareness of the importance of organizing themselves against a backdrop of growing persecution and repression of street vending. During those conversations, Silvia often points out that, while that decision was a first step in protecting their way of life as buscas, they quickly realized that it was not enough. Thus, she recalls how that the process of organization included the creation of a series of care and collective protection practices, such as the production of a card with the cooperative’s logo identifying them as members, or the use of shirts or coats with the Branch’s logo. She mentions how those practices were strengthened significantly after their integration with broader union building dynamics, such as becoming part of the UTEP, obtaining access to health insurance, a Social Supplementary Wage20 or, more recently, the National Registry of Workers of the Popular Economy (ReNaTEP). Implemented in 2020 by the Social Economy Secretariat of the National Ministry of Social Development (which, after the Frente de Todos coalition took office, was left in charge of UTEP leaders), the registry is a response to the popular economy organizations’ demand for the members of said economy to be recognized as workers. The inclusion of street vending among eligible activities was seen as a significant conquest for the leaders of the Branch. When, on February 20th, police arrested Esteban and Pedro to put names and convictions to a crime whose perpetrators had escaped, the Branch became a flurry of calls, contacts, Facebook posts, searches for evidence, and ultimately, a demonstration before the office of the prosecutor in charge of the case, after which both workers were released. One of the most significant pieces of “evidence” found was the men’s enrollment in the ReNaTEP, which confirmed their status as workers, leaving in abeyance their status as criminals. In the following days, Esteban and Pedro were able to return to the streets to make a living as buscas, something they had done for years, and which they hope to continue doing, albeit in less risky conditions.

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TO PRODUCE DIGNIFIED DEATHS A few blocks away from the San Miguel station of the San Martín line, a small house, neatly painted in blue and white, serves as the headquarters of the northern section of the Branch, inaugurated in October 2021 upon loosening of the restrictions put in place due to the pandemic caused by the Sars CoV-2 virus. One of most prominent walls in the hall, a few feet away from the entrance, shows a mural designed for the inauguration, celebrating the vendors who were involved in the creation of the organization and who died before seeing their dream of a space for the Branch fulfilled. Under the inscription “Those who lived fighting will live on in every fight and every victory,” the mural shows their pictures and the ReNaTEP membership cards they could not receive while alive. The center of the mural depicts Adrián, who died in July 2021, in the province of Neuquén, from an electrical accident in the place he was sharing with two other vendors whom he would travel around the country selling cookware. Transporting and burying the body required quickly raising a significant amount of money, something the Branch accomplished in a few hours by using social media to post the information of a bank account opened for donations to the funeral costs. Together with the bank information and a brief description of what had happened, they included the following text: “We need the cooperation of everyone able to help so we can bring Adrián back and say goodbye.” The raising of funds to finance or collaborate with expenditures related to burials, hospitalizations, or major diseases is part of the “codes of life” vendors have created to face the experiences of work-life precarity, where two temporalities coexist: both the present experience of this precarity and the generational memory of it. This precarity includes the exposure to systematic violence or lack of access to adequate healthcare for chronic diseases specifically linked to working in the public space, which entails being outdoors, lacking access to sanitation facilities, and hauling backbreaking loads. These conditions are coupled by others shared among the rest of the workers of the popular economy, such as the complete lack of vacation days, sick or maternity leaves, access to pensions, or other social protections. As Sylvia says, “By the time we are 40, our bodies are done for, useless,” highlighting how these precarious work-life conditions are embodied in ailments and chronic diseases that are often rendered invisible. These “codes of life” created to resist situations of precarity and systematic violence are the basis of the development of a set of collective practices of protection and care which include the organization of the cooperative itself. In analytical terms, the cooperative is both part of and redefines practices

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of care aimed at ensuring the sustainability of life in a broad sense,21 that is, going beyond strictly material needs to include affective needs as well, such as the objective and subjective ability to project a life into the future. They are encompassed by what some authors call “community care practices”22 and are part of the broader process of production of collective well-being strategies developed by popular economy organizations with the state, against the state, and from the state.23 My first meeting with the members of the Cooperative of United Vendors of the San Martín Railway was in August 2016. They had organized a “solidarity day” aimed at raising funds to buy a hearing aid for a vendor who had to undergo surgical intervention. The event, which took place in a field near the San Miguel station, included a football match and a shared meal. During the closing ceremony, different members of the committee stressed how important the event was as a means to “solve our fellow worker’s problem” and to “continue organizing ourselves.” In order to organize the meal and the football match, in the days before the event, the delegates had collected money among the vendors of the San Martín railway. They also used supplies from government programs and donations from other organizations of the popular economy. Afterward, the collected funds were given to the vendor, and the winning team received a trophy. Just as in the case of the neighborhood organizations of Córdoba analyzed by Julieta Quirós,24 solidarity days entail a common effort in which the money collected, and the profit made, is the result of processes for the production of value through collective work. This production of value is both mercantile and non-mercantile in nature: while it creates an economic profit—the amount obtained by mobilizing the money, the merchandise and the supplies gathered through the activities prior to the event—it also produces non-mercantile benefits: the peace of mind that comes from solving a fellow worker’s plight, securing the hearing aid, and building an organization, to name but a few. There lies the importance of pointing out the interwoven nature of this process, which is simultaneously mercantile and non-mercantile. In the following years, I took part in several solidarity days organized for similar situations: raising funds for a vendor or a sick relative who had to be hospitalized and could not afford an intervention, or for a fellow worker who, facing a serious disease, was unable to work for several days. When the urgent nature of the situation warrants it, as in the case of Adrián, money is collected directly. During those years, I was able to see how fast the vendors managed to raise money to help workers with health issues or hospitalized relatives. The ability to secure sufficient funds to organize a solidarity event relatively fast is something I witnessed time and again and marks a stark contrast with an image which reduces street vending to situations of survival or deprivation. While the idea of “living from day to day” is clearly an inherent

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part of street vending as a means to make a living, it is also true that it is an activity which circulates high volumes of money, a fact which enables the creation of collective savings strategies. Such is the case of the fund that the members decided to create based on voluntary contributions, upon the growth of the cooperative. The fund is carefully recorded in notebooks kept by the treasurer and is monitored by the internal commission in regular meetings. It is used almost exclusively to finance expenditures related to funerals and, occasionally, for serious health issues or hospitalizations. Having a fund to cover burial-related expenses is of utmost importance, as these situations are usually unexpected, beyond the means of many families, and psychologically necessary. Burying relatives is part of that which defines a dignified life, of what matters, from a Graverian perspective of value.25 This shared fund is not only valued because it allows paying for a funeral, a benefit significant in and of itself, but also because of the peace of mind provided by the knowledge that, should an urgent situation arise, the fund (which is created through individual contributions, but made collective through the cooperative’s dynamics) is available. As in the case of the solidarity day, the money contributed individually acquires value—value which is simultaneously mercantile and non-mercantile—in the collective dynamic. Moreover, the availability of this burial fund reduces, at least in the case of extreme situations, the need to borrow money. For this reason, in certain special circumstances, the fund was used for other purposes, such as granting a loan to replace a TV ruined in a house fire (an extremely common occurrence because of the precarious state of the dwellings). There have even been discussions about creating an internal credit system, though the idea was temporarily abandoned when public policies were implemented in this regard.26 In the last few years, a series of qualitative studies have drawn attention to the relevance the various forms of borrowing have gained in the everyday dynamics of the popular sectors.27 Local studies have highlighted the critical role of the “bankization” of government subsidies as regards the strategies used by these sectors to borrow, the wide array of nonbank entities and stores which extend cash loans or finance the acquisition of consumer goods with very high interest rates, neighborhood or family arrangements, or other “illegal” sources.28 Challenging the widespread assumption that the popular sectors are excluded or outside the financial system, this research shows how borrowing dynamics among popular sectors reinforce situations of inequality based on financial exploitation mechanisms which have a disproportionate effect on this group.29 Particularly highlighted are the ways these mechanisms are exacerbated by the discrepancy between the financing schedule (monthly) and the schedule of work (erratic), elucidating the specific ways in which people borrow money and the temporalities each borrowing modality

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entails.30 Thus, the creation of a common fund—and its extraordinary use as an internal credit system—makes sense as well as a means of escaping predatory lending practices, as it makes it possible to evade high interest rates and organize the schedule for the repayment of the loans. This forms part of a broader set of collective well-being strategies developed by the organizations of the popular economy which make sustaining life possible. CLOSING REMARKS To work in peace, and to provide proper burials for our dead, are aspirations and expectations for the present-future modeled by an experience marked by processes of precarization and dispossession, embodied in stories which are simultaneously personal and collective. These aspirations mesh with ideas of autonomy and economic progress: to work in peace entails the possibility of making a living according to one’s choices: that is, without being persecuted over an activity which, however precarious and unstable, makes it possible to generate high volumes of circulating money. This does not mean that vendors “earn a lot,” but that this activity enables them to earn more than other activities to which they usually have access—particularly those which the neo-liberalizing processes, in their economic-political-ideological-cultural interrelation, promote as “entrepreneurship.” What’s more, it allows them to control what they generate, to have an income of their own. Practices oriented to the reproduction of life, particularly as regards the popular sectors, are usually associated with ideas of the short-term, and urgency linked to the concept of survival. Considering how aspirations and expectations for the future shape processes of political experimentation and collective struggle makes it possible to shed light on how the efforts developed by these social groups to make a living are part of a perspective that goes beyond immediate survival (though also clearly include it). Far from being a futurology of sorts, reflections on the future as a field for anthropological research are rooted in an analysis of the future in the present.31 As this chapter aims to discuss, expectations and projections for the future perform life in the present, and are shaped by past experiences in a temporality which ties together past, present, and future. Investment in the future, and imagining a dignified life, are a part of how people sustain and produce ways of making a living day after day. “Street vending is not a crime,” reads the banner unfurled by the Branch during its demonstrations, synthesizing the struggle to defend a way of life which is under threat. The production of those ways of making a living entails a dispute over their value, which includes the recognition of street vendors as workers. This process of confrontation over ways of making a living is, thus,

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tied to another dispute over the ways of producing value implied by them. It is related to a process of valorization of socially denigrated and threatened activities: the defense of these ways of making a living requires producing the conditions in which it is possible to sell or, rather, to continue being a busca. This production of value is bound to the political struggle of how value is produced and what produces value—a “politics of value.”32 The production of these ways of making a living hinges on the creation of a set of strategies which entail a process of value production which is simultaneously mercantile and non-mercantile. NOTES 1. For confidentiality’s sake, fictitious names were used, with the exception of certain leaders who explicitly requested otherwise. 2. Miyazaki, “Economy of Dreams: Hope in Global Capitalism and Its Critiques”; Appadurai, The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition; Fischer, The Good Life Aspiration, Dignity, and the Anthropology of Wellbeing. Narotzky and Besnier “Crisis, value, and hope: rethinking the economy: an introduction to supplement”; de l’Estoile, “‘Money Is Good, but a Friend Is Better.’ Uncertainty, Orientation to the Future, and ‘the Economy.’” 3. Gago, La razón neoliberal, economías barrocas y pragmática popular. 4. Dewey, Making It at Any Cost: Aspirations and Politics in a Counterfeit Clothing Marketplace. 5. UTEP is a union organization recently created in Argentina with the goal of representing and securing rights for workers of the popular economy, understood as those who, having been left out of the formal labor market, “devised ways of making a living in order to survive.” Its inception comprises a heterogeneous set of social and political organizations which were prominent in the struggle against the neoliberal policies implemented in the 1990s in Argentina, and represent a diversity of political-ideological trends. According to the UTEP’s political construction, the “popular economy” defines a vindicating category which encompasses a plurality of socio-productive forms including both activities related to the production and marketing of goods and services, and various formats of unpaid work and community care carried out in poor neighborhoods, which stress the boundaries between productive/reproductive, formal/informal, mercantile/non-mercantile. They comprise, for instance, street vending, tailoring, and the recovery of recyclable materials, as well as unpaid community work, or the people employed in infrastructure works under government social programs. Based on that diversity and following a union-building rationale, it is organized in branches by activity sector, with the goal of unifying issues, goals, and common interests shared by the different socio-productive sectors. 6. Narotzky and Besnier, “Crisis, value, and hope: rethinking the economy: an introduction to supplement.”

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7. de l’Estoile, “‘Money Is Good, but a Friend Is Better.’ Uncertainty, Orientation to the Future, and ‘the Economy.’” 8. Fernández Álvarez and Perelman “Perspectivas antropológicas sobre las formas de (ganarse la) vida.” 9. Fernández Álvarez, La política afectada. Experiencia, trabajo y vida cotidiana en Brukman recuperada; Fernández Álvarez, “Para una afirmación etnográfica de la noción de clase social: reflexiones a partir de un estudio con trabajadores de la ‘economía popular’ en Argentina.” 10. Quintana. The Politics of Bodies: Philosophical Emancipations with and beyond Rancière. 11. Fernández Álvarez, “Experiencias de precariedad, creación de derechos y producción colectiva de bienestar(es) desde la economía popular.” 12. In the particular case of those who perform this activity in urban railways, vending is “inherited,” so that the relations between vendors and the way in which the activity takes place are organized based on bonds of kinship and familial links which go beyond “biological” connections inasmuch as the train represents a relational space which creates and (re)defines those relationships. 13. The distinction between “young” or “new” and “old” or “lifelong” vendors defines a classification which is highly significant within this social universe, which has been pointed out in other studies (Perelman 2017). “Old,” “young,” and “new” do not necessarily refer to age—though they may—but mainly to a distinction between those who were arrested, or spent time in jail, or had to face the police or law enforcement, and those who never had to undergo that experience. 14. The San Martín line was inaugurated in 1888 by the Buenos Aires Railway to the Pacific, a company of British capitals that operated in Argentina during the later part of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. The railway system was nationalized in 1948, during Juan Domingo Perón’s presidency, operated by the state-owned company called Ferrocarriles Argentinos. In the 1990s, the railway system was privatized under the neoliberal reforms put in place by Carlos Menem, the president at the time, who awarded the system’s management to a private company. The concession of the urban passenger service of the San Martín line to the Company called Ferrocarriles Metropolitanos S.A. took place between 1994 and 1995. More than ten years later, in 2004, the national government revoked the concession and created the Emergency Railway Operational Management Unit (UGOFE), a joint venture formed by the government and private operators, subsequently dissolved in 2014. On March 1, 2015, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced a bill to create the Argentine Railways State Company (Argentine Railways), which has since operated the San Martín line. 15. Pita, “Poder de policía y administración de grupos sociales. El caso de los vendedores ambulantes senegaleses en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires,” Perelman, “Disputas em torno ao uso do espaço público.” As has been developed in other works (Pita 2012), the focused modalities of direct expulsion and repression are combined with other forms of engaging with law enforcement, which include negotiations and understandings in the context of what has been defined as a management of “tolerable illegalities,” which is translated into a discretionary administration. Far from being a

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phenomenon we could consider local, this situation, with differences and particularities, is repeated in other countries in Latin America and the world. Pires, “Precários e perigosos: possíveis relações entre formalidade e informalidade em processos de administração de conflitos no Rio de Janeiro,” Hirata, “Comércio ambulante no Rio de Janeiro e em Sâo Paulo: grupos de poder e instrumentos contemporâneos de governo” Goldstein, Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City; Vargas and Urinboyev “Everyday Forms of Resistance to the Law: An Ethnographic Study of Street Vendors in Bogotá, Colombia”; Milliot “Remettre de l’ordre dans la rue. Politiques de l’espace public à la Goutted’Or (Paris).” 16. This process of dispute is supplemented by the development of a theory which can be classified as a (de)fetishization of the public space, inasmuch as it sheds light on the relations of appropriation-expropriation, of production of inequalities and asymmetries, concealed by the idea of ordering the public space put forward by the government, challenging a long-standing discussion of what we deem “(in)formal” or “(il)legal.” Fernández Álvarez, “Más allá de la precariedad: prácticas colectivas y subjetividades políticas desde la economía popular Argentina.” 17. Caldeira, City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo; Wacquant Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality, Susser, Norman Street: Poverty and Politics in an Urban Neighborhood. 18. Ghertner Nuisance Talk and the Propriety of Property: Middle-Class Discourses of a Slum-Free Delhi; Millot “Remettre de l’ordre dans la rue. Politiques de l’espace public à la Goutted’Or (Paris).” 19. Pita, “Poder de policía y administración de grupos sociales. El caso de los vendedores ambulantes senegaleses en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires”; Paccerca, Canelo and Belcic. “‘Culpar a los negros y a los pobres.’ Los ‘manteros’ senegaleses ante los allanamientos en el barrio de Once.’” 20. The Social Supplementary Wage is a direct cash transfer for workers of the popular economy whose income is below the minimum wage, and is classified as a “supplement” to the income generated by each worker’s activity. The amount granted as a cash transfer is defined as half the minimum living wage. The Social Supplementary Wage was created under the Law of social and alimentary emergency, and of the organizations of the popular economy (Law No. 27. 345) passed on December, 2016, and promoted by the organizations of the popular economy enrolled in the UTEP. 21. Carrasco, “El cuidado como eje vertebrador de una nueva economía.” Pérez Orozco Subversión feminista de la economía. Aportes para un debate. 22. Vega, Martinez, and Paredes, “Introducción. Experiencias, ámbitos y vínculos cooperativos en el sostenimiento de la vida.” 23. Fernández Álvarez, “Experiencias de precariedad, creación de derechos y producción colectiva de bienestar(es) desde la economía popular.” 24. Quirós, “Trabajo en común. Formas autóctonas de economía política desde el interior de Córdoba (Argentina).” 25. Graeber, Hacia una teoría antropológica del valor. La moneda falsa de nuestros sueños. 26. In the context of the organization’s growth and the designation of its leaders for various positions in the Ministry of Social Development, the Branch began in 2020

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to manage microcredits under the National Program of Microcredits for the Development of the Social Economy. While this policy was implemented in 2006, access to microcredits is a recent development for the members of the Branch, and is highly valued by the sector’s leaders, as it enabled vendors to improve their marketing strategies and their working conditions. The provision of microcredits also contributed, in some instances, to cushion the effects caused by the pandemic, which affected mainly those who carry out this activity, due to the lock-down measures taken, particularly during the first few months. 27. Palomera, “How did Finance Capital Infiltrate the World of the Urban Poor? Homeownership and Social Gragmentation in a Spanish Neighborhood”; Gago and Roig, “Las finanzas y las cosas”; Gago, La razón neoliberal, economías barrocas y pragmática popular; Guerrin, “Juggling with Debt, Social Ties and Values: the Everyday Use of Microcredit in Rural South India”; Chena and Roig, “L’exploitation financière des secteurs populaires argentins”; Saiag, “Financialization from the Margins: Notes on the Incorporation of Rosario’s Sub-proletariat into Consumer Credit (Argentina, 2009–2015).” 28. Gago and Roig, “Las finanzas y las cosas”; Gago, La razón neoliberal, economías barrocas y pragmática popular. 29. Chena and Roig, “L’exploitation financière des secteurs populaires argentins”; Gago and Roig, “Las finanzas y las cosasvGago La razón neoliberal, economías barrocas y pragmática popular”; 30. Saiag, “Financialization from the Margins: Notes on the Incorporation of Rosario’s Sub-proletariat into Consumer Credit (Argentina, 2009–2015).” 31. Pink and Salazar, “Anthropologies and Futures: Setting the Agenda”; Bryant and Knight, The Anthropology of the Future; Jansen, “Yearnings: On Keeping the Present and the Past at the Heart of an Anthropology of the Future.” 32. Collins, “Expanding the labor theory of value.”

REFERENCES Appadurai, Arjun. The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition, London: Verso Books, 2013. Bryant, Rebecca, and Daniel Knight. The Anthropology of the Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Caldeira, Teresa. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Carrasco, Cristina “El cuidado como eje vertebrador de una nueva economía.” Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales 31, no. 1 (2001): 39–56. Chena, Pablo, and Alexandre Roig. “L’exploitation financière des secteurs populaires argentins.” Revue de la regulation 22 (2017): 1–22. Collins, Janes. “Expanding the labor theory of value” Dialectical Anthropology, 40 no 2 (2016): 103–23.

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de L’Estoile, Benôit. “‘Money Is Good, but a Friend Is Better.’ Uncertainty, Orientation to the Future, and ‘the Economy.’” Current Anthropology, 55, no S9 (2014): 62–73. Dewey, Matias. Making It at Any Cost: Aspirations and Politics in a Counterfeit Clothing Marketplace. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020. Fernández Álvarez, María Inés. “Experiencias de precariedad, creación de derechos y producción colectiva de bienestar(es) desde la economía popular.” Ensambles, no 4/5, 2016. 72–89. ———. La política afectada. Experiencia, trabajo y vida cotidiana en Brukman recuperada. Rosario: Prohistoria, 2017. ———. “Más allá de la precariedad: prácticas colectivas y subjetividades políticas desde la economía popular Argentina” Iconos. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, no 62 (2018): 21–38. ———. “Para una afirmación etnográfica de la noción de clase social: reflexiones a partir de un estudio con trabajadores de la ‘economía popular’ en Argentina.” In: Tratado Latinoamericano de Antropología del Trabajo. Edited by Palermo, Hernan and Capogrossi, Lorena. Buenos Aires: CLACSO/CEIL-CONICET/CIECySCONICET-UNC. 2020. Fernández Álvarez, María Inés, and Mariano Perelman. “Perspectivas antropológicas sobre las formas de (ganarse la) vida.” Cuadernos de Antropología Social no 51 (2020): 7–19. Fischer, Edward. The Good Life: Aspiration, Dignity, and the Anthropology of Wellbeing. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. Gago, Verónica. La razón neoliberal, economías barrocas y pragmática popular. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón, 2014. Gago, Verónica, and Alexandre Roig. “Las finanzas y las cosas.” In El imperio de las finanzas. Deuda y desigualdad. Edited by Pablo Chena and Pedro Biscay. Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila, 2019. Ghertner, Asher. “Nuisance Talk and the Propriety of Property: Middle-Class Discourses of a Slum-Free Delhi.” Antipode, 44, no. 4 (2012):1161–87. Goldstein, Daniel. Owners of the sidewalk. Security and survival in the informal city. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016. Graeber, David. Hacia una teoría antropológica del valor. La moneda falsa de nuestros sueños. Trad. J. Gaztañaga. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2018. Guérin, Isabelle. “Juggling with Debt, Social Ties and Values: the Everyday Use of Microcredit in Rural South India.” Current Anthropology 55, no. S9 (2014): S40–S50. Hirata, Daniel. “Comércio ambulante no Rio de Janeiro e em Sâo Paulo: grupos de poder e instrumentos contemporâneos de governo” In: Disopsitivos urbanos e tramas dos Viventes. Ordens e Resistencias. Edited by Patricia Birman, Márcia Leite, Carly Lachado, and Sandra Rio de Janeiro Carneiro: Editora FGV. 2015. Jansen, Stef. “Yearnings: On Keeping the Present and the Past at the Heart of an Anthropology of the Future.” In “Orientations to the Future,” Edited by Rebecca Bryant and Daniel M. Knight. American Ethnologist Website, March 8. 2019.

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Milliot, Virgine. “Remettre de l’ordre dans la rue. Politiques de l’espace public à la Goutted’Or (Paris).” Ethnologie française, 153, no. 3 (2015): 431–43. Miyazaki, Hirokazu. “Economy of Dreams: Hope in Global Capitalism and Its Critiques” Cultural Anthropology, 21, no. (2006): 147–72. Narotzky, Susana, and Niko Besnier. “Crisis, value, and hope: rethinking the economy: an introduction to supplement” Current Anthropology, 55, no. S9 (2014): S4–S16. Paccerca, María Inés, Brenda Canelo, and Sofia Belcic. “Culpar a los negros y a los pobres.” Los “manteros” senegaleses ante los allanamientos en el barrio de Once.” In Territorios de control policial. Gestión de ilegalismos en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, edited by María Victoria Pita, and María Inés Pacecca. 199–220. Buenos Aires: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UBA, 2017. Palomera, Jaime. “How did Finance Capital Infiltrate the World of the Urban Poor? Homeownership and Social Fragmentation in a Spanish Neighborhood.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38, no. 1 (2013): 218–35. Perelman, Mariano. “Pensando la desigualdad urbana desde el trabajo callejero.” En Fronteras en la ciudad. (Re)producción de desigualdades y conflictos urbanos. Edited by Martin Boy and Mariano Perelman, 19–44. Buenos Aires: Teseo, 2017. ———. “Disputas em torno ao uso do espaço público.” Cuadernos del CRH, 31, no. 82 (2018): 87–98. Pérez Orozco, Amaia. Subversión feminista de la economía. Aportes para un debate. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 2014. Pires, Lenin dos Santos. “Precários e perigosos: possíveis relações entre formalidade e informalidade em processos de administração de conflitos no Rio de Janeiro.” In: Disputas em Torno do Espaço Urbano Processos de Produção /Construção e Apropriação da Cidade, edited by John Gledhill, María Gabriela Hita, and Mariano Perelman, 369–85. Salvador de Bahía: UFBA editora, 2017. Pink, Sarah, and Francisco Salazar. “Anthropologies and Futures: Setting the Agenda” In Anthropologies and Futures: Researching Emerging and Uncertain Worlds, edited by Salazar, Francisco, Sarah Pink, and Andrew Irving, 3–22. Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2017. Pita, María Victoria. “Mitologías porteñas en torno al poder policial. Policía, contravenciones y gestión de ilegalismos en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.” Revista de La Biblioteca, no 12 (2012): 182–209. Pita, María Victoria. “Poder de policía y administración de grupos sociales. El caso de los vendedores ambulantes senegaleses en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires,” In: Territorios de control policial. Gestión de ilegalismos en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Edited by María Victoria Pita and María Inés Pacecca. 147–88. Buenos Aires: Fac. de Filosofía y Letras, UBA. 2017. Quintana, Laura. The Politics of Bodies: Philosophical Emancipations with and beyond Rancière. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. Quirós, Julieta. “Trabajo en común. Formas autóctonas de economía política desde el interior de Córdoba (Argentina).” Cuadernos de Antropología Social no 51 (2020): 113–33.

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Saiag, Hadrien. “Financialization from the Margins: Notes on the Incorporation of Rosario’s Sub-proletariat into Consumer Credit (Argentina, 2009–2015)” Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, no 87 (2020): 16–32. Susser, Ida. Norman Street: Poverty and politics in an urban neighborhood. Oxford University Press, 2012. Vargas, Ana María, and Rustamjon Urinboyev. “Everyday forms of resistance to the law: an ethnographic study of street vendors in Bogotá, Colombia” Droit et Société, no 91 (2015): 1–15. Vega, Cristina, Raquel Martinez, and Myriam Paredes. “Introducción. Experiencias, ámbitos y vínculos cooperativos en el sostenimiento de la vida” In Cuidado, comunidad y común. Extracciones, apropiaciones y sostenimiento de la vida, edited by Cristina Vega, Raquel Martinez, and Myriam Paredes, 15–50. Madrid: Traficante de sueños, 2018. Wacquant, Loïc. Urban Outcasts: a Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.

Chapter 8

Governing through a Politics of Death Neoliberalism and the Ruination of Life Laura Quintana

In this text, I reflect on some of the dynamics that various peasant, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian movements have articulated under the idea of a “Politics of Death.” This term refers to a network of forms of power and domination that go beyond the sovereign decision to kill certain bodies at a certain time (although this is also at stake), to extend a variety of techniques—direct and indirect—through which human and nonhuman life is subjected and destroyed in search of an economic return, a profit. Here, as we shall see, death becomes profitable. It destroys bodies, but also the places they inhabit: territories, understood by peasant communities as vital spaces in which close links are woven between humans, animals, and the environment, through collective memory and the practices that sustain and reproduce life: [In Colombia] the territory has been the scene of permanent disputes between economic and political interests. A hegemonic vision of development has been imposed on it, using armed violence, structural racism, patriarchy. . . . These structural violences have affected the territory and those of us who are part of it, mostly black, indigenous and peasant peoples who are racialized, impoverished and violated. . . . This, of course, is part of a policy of death that has led us to experience systematic human rights violations, such as: exile, forced displacement, permanent death threats, assassinations, massacres, sexual violence, exclusion in terms of social investment by the state, militarization and territorial control by armed actors that result in violence, not to mention the environmental impacts affecting the territory.1 143

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The politics of death, as it appears in the words of environmental leader and current vice president of Colombia Francia Márquez, turns territories into enclaves that are both sources of wealth and, at the same time, theaters of war, where different powers fight to control life. In the process, life is reduced to extractable resources; routes for the circulation and traffic of goods; exploitable bodies (human, animal, aquatic, terrestrial). Competing projects of accumulation and liminal borders mark what is possessed, what can be appropriated, what can be said, and what is possible within a certain conception of the social order. As a result, economic interests are deeply intertwined with political interventions and institutions (both legal and illegal). This connection is framed in a vision of development as governed by the hegemonic colonial values of the white, enterprising, and property-owning male, as Márquez points out and as I elaborate below. Viewed from this perspective, the places assumed as peripheral are intensively and extensively exploited in pursuit of capital accumulation. As Achille Mbembe and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee have already analyzed—especially in the case of Africa—these places are thus enclosed, dispossessed, and devastated. They are turned into spaces of terror and death, for the benefit of the few and of an increasingly impersonal and abstract financial regime. In what follows, I set out to illustrate how the formulation of a “politics of death” extends critical reflections on necropolitics,2 necrocapitalism,3 and neoliberalism as necroeconomy,4 to assert a broader ecological-political approach, connecting crucial problems of our present that, increasingly, result in living in ruined territories, with all that this implies. In carrying out this reflection, I will draw from concrete experiences to analyze some of the techniques integral to such a politics of death. I highlight the way these techniques pass through spatial, temporal, and corporeal dimensions, in articulations of power that actualize colonial devices and more contemporary neoliberal interventions (state and parastatal). These assemblages result in great profit for global financial capitalism, while depleting and destroying more vital networks for sustaining and reproducing life. Finally, I will examine a number of corporeal efforts deployed in labor practices, forms of popular mobilization, and conceptualizations emerged from devastated territories in Colombia. These intend to counteract the effects of a politics of death and can give us clues on how to rethink life from what has been ruined. A POLITICS OF DEATH The politics of death, while accentuated by neoliberalism, is the result of long-standing conditions, such as a development framework based on the imperative of economic growth, and the industrialization, technification, and

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urbanization of all corners of the world in the pursuit of “modernization.”5 This framework is far from homogeneous, and its coordinates and parameters have shifted over time. Indeed, as Arturo Escobar points out, if development economics and its promise of wealth and prosperity for the so-called “Third World” began with interventionist economic programs such as the statist and redistributive approaches of the 1950s and 1960s, these models, and their links to the welfare state, were completely undone with the idea that development can be “market-based,”6 and the anti-interventionist policies of neoliberal programs of the 1990s. In any case, this framework, in its various versions, draws clear boundaries of colonial origin, between center/periphery; progress/underdevelopment; spaces of prosperity/places of extraction; viable lives/nonviable lives; developed subjects (capable, active)/ backward subjects (incapable, impotent, passive). Thus, even when anchored to concepts such as the welfare state, the development framework has always implied an unequal distribution of prosperity, and a subordination of some lives to others. The borders of this development framework also have a long and changing history, dating back to colonialism but repeatedly modified.7 This regime of sense privileges the white man’s mode of existence, formed within an economic rationality centered on growth and accumulation and an emphasis on the ideals of self-determination, sovereignty, and utilitarian rationality, embodied by the productive or entrepreneurial subject, to put it in neoliberal terms. This self-referential ideal is assumed to be universalizable and normatively superior, based on the image of a subject who claims to be the master of his fate and who should appropriate all that he can control, thanks to a technical knowledge, which—it is presumed—would allow him to guide others in the process of acquiring this form of existence.8 It is also a vision that subjugates as exploitable both the territories defined as marginal, peripheral, or wasteland (yet, simultaneously, central to economic growth), and the lives of the racialized bodies—understood as ignorant and backward—that inhabit them, with brutal effects for those considered “inferior.” Such effects can be described in different philosophical approaches with different implications. On the one hand, this resulting brutality can be understood as deriving from a thanatopolitical dimension of a biopolitics that, in proposing to manage and improve the life of a given population, always marginalizes those who cannot be fully assimilated and who are often considered a menace for the social body that is privileged. This view is in line with different reflections on biopower from Foucault, Agamben, and Esposito. On the other hand, these violent repercussions can be understood as the result of a colonial death machine, which continues to operate in contemporary capitalism and its (post)colonial devices.9 This machine perpetually creates areas inhabited by lives that are not considered to be “part of the normative social world, a type of political existential excess that opens them to be killed with

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impunity.”10 To take yet another approach, these effects can also be thought of as inherent to contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism in particular. By subsuming every aspect of the world under the logic of the market and, therefore, treating everything as monetizable, neoliberal capitalism valorizes the exclusion, abandonment, or even the massacre of certain bodies, “as surplus populations that are (re)produced as death-subjects, as people whose role in the economy is to be victims.”11 The expression “politics of death” takes account of these varying analyses, integrating them into a broader ecosystemic vision, in which the evolution of the development framework extends back to colonialism, with a multitude of effects for the territories assumed as peripheral or marginal. These territories have essentially been considered “no man’s land,” according to a logic of exception which seeks to justify the annexation of these places to serve the dynamics of global capital.12 Here, a competition for sovereignty often ends up “justifying” and enabling, in one way or another, such an annexation. But this capture is not merely a question—as for Agamben—of the always spectral—present as absent, absent as present—and deadly face of the law, which operates by excluding what it sees as naked life. That is an exposed and killable life, which always remains hidden from the operation—traced by the “anthropological machine”—of defining a politically normative bios.13 We are dealing instead with highly material, situated sovereignties, deployed through the law, but also in underworlds of illegality. These margins of the law are eventually legalized, strengthening a state power that is also absent, and may even be empowered by the “myth” of its absence, something we will discuss further later on.14 In any case, these practices entail the deployment of the power to decide over life and death, sometimes sporadically and inconsistently, and sometimes in routinized institutional dynamics, with the intention of controlling bodies, the territories they inhabit, and the borders that delimit them. They are based on operations of domination and regulation that in turn enable inscribing these places in an economy of expropriation and accumulation. Such logic of exception, along with its destructive effects, has intensified with neoliberal interventions. Neoliberalism, as a form of rationality centered on converting “every human need and every desire into a profitable undertaking,” has also produced a particular type of state15—a “securitarian” state dedicated to creating conditions (legal, financial, and civil) conducive to big capital, resorting, in some cases, to forms of police and paramilitary repression of popular discontent. Meanwhile, the various branches of government are increasingly enmeshed with corporate interests,16 leading to an imbalance of power, a lack of representation, a reduction of civil rights and public services, and an increase in labor insecurity and social precarity.

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In fact, in many parts of the global South, such as Colombia, security interventions have given rise to—and been articulated with—a power to kill, at times “legalized” and made institutionally invisible. This often occurs in tandem with operations of dispossession and projected abandonment sometimes deployed through spectacularized and predatory forms of violence— paramilitary and Mafia-like—akin to what Sayak Valencia has conceptualized as “gore capitalism.”17 These interventions have, in one way or another, proved highly efficient for big capital, while their brutal devices tend to be masked by the logic of development with which they are associated, and which they claim as justification. Indeed, the forms of precariousness, helplessness, and devastation brought about by a politics of death would appear to be counteracted by the very development framework with which they are at the same time intertwined, trapping the affected regions in vicious cycles. In any case, given the materiality of these interventions, considering their singularity and their effects implies the need to analyze them on the basis of concrete experiences that allow us to reposition the previously assumed concepts, question them and potentially alter them. With this in mind, I will focus on two cases that I consider paradigmatic. On the one hand, I will refer to certain dynamics in the banana-growing area of Urabá (Colombia), which highlight the historical antecedents of the politics of death, and the sovereignties that it can articulate, based on a prior understanding of certain places as spaces of exception.18 Then, I will reference the northern part of the Cauca, a region that clearly exemplifies how certain legal and illegal operations linked to the development framework and long-standing privileges have destroyed peasant existence in all its “territorial, political, economic, and cultural” assemblages.19 These cases will enable me to specify certain devices at play in a politics of death, and some of its ruinous effects. Exceptionality, Spaces of Terror, Productive Violence Colombia’s Urabá region has been known and promoted as “the best corner of America.” This subregion is part of the department of Antioquia, and it shares a border with other regions of the country such as Córdoba, Chocó, as well as with Panama. Located on the Gulf of Urabá, it connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, central to the world economy and trade between the Americas, and could therefore be said to boast a privileged geographic position. However, it is, and has long been, one of the most violent parts of the country. The “best corner of America” is, in fact, an open wound. The region has been plagued, particularly since the 1980s, by clashes between guerrillas and military and paramilitary forces over sovereignty of the area, and suffered numerous massacres and assassinations of political leaders, particularly those of the left. According to Forensic Architecture’s “Traces of Disappearance”

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research, ordered by the Colombian Truth Commission, “Urabá is known for extreme political violence, which has gripped the region since the 1980s. Massacres and paramilitary groups have driven away thousands, who left behind their homes and agricultural land.”20 By carefully analyzing and cross-referencing numerous archives (testimonies of victims and perpetrators, financial and property data, press archives, corporate leaks), “Traces of Disappearance” reveals the links between these massacres and a project of dispossession promoted by local and transnational banana producers. This project of dispossession was undertaken under the auspices of local and national authorities and carried out by paramilitary squads in alliance with the country’s military forces. The work also illustrates how banana companies, banks, investment funds, and state institutions involved in different financial transactions legalized, laundered and ultimately masked this regime of accumulation based on dispossession.21 The Colombian state thus ended up participating in these operations and consolidating itself in the area as a securitarian state, while the paramilitary incursions that conducted the operations came to be justified by claims of self-defense, given an allegedly absent state incapable of guaranteeing security in the face of the insurgencies and their actions against the property of landowners and companies in the area. In this respect, as pointed out by political science researcher Jacobo Grajales, “violence did not threaten the state, but instead contributed to its continued formation.”22 Such violence in Colombia became naturalized through numerous justifications. In the national news media, violence in Urabá was often assumed as the paradoxical fate of an area full of possibility; as a “curse,” precisely because of those resources; or as the effect of an alleged state absence for which nobody could be held responsible and which, time and again, presented it as a chaotic region that should be controlled and domesticated. These readings promote the normalization of violence by obscuring the actual patterns, dynamics, and points of emerging violence which fuel each other.23 Geographer Teo Ballvé has recently insisted on the problematic nature of assuming the Hobbesian view that it is the lack of a state that has thrown the Urabá region into the chaos of a sort of “state of nature.”24 According to Ballvé’s archival and ethnographic work, the state has long been present in Urabá and even shaped the region, through development projects, national agencies and local entities, the military, and alliances with paramilitary forces and intervention programs serving the interests of local elites and global corporations. The assumption that, given the presumed absence of the state, it must further consolidate itself has been crucial to such projects. In this way, the idea of this absence has operated as a “myth,”25 as a cultural representation that has allowed the naturalization of certain historically situated practices.

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The duration of this history is significant. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Antioquian elites viewed Urabá as both a key point connecting Medellín with the sea and an area full of riches to be exploited and commercialized. It was therefore assumed to be a satellite zone dependent on a metropolis and, at that time, governed “by a profoundly racist set of cultural politics emanating from the city.”26 This subordination, with its internal colonialism, resulted in highly unequal development. The elites of the region who recognized themselves as white, and who even assumed “the myth of their racial purity,”27 became rich at the expense of Urabá’s exploitation and impoverishment,28 a region inhabited by racialized people. For these Antioquian elites, poverty in Urabá was explained by racial and geographic reasons, thus erasing the histories of violence and exploitation that have plagued the region since colonial times, when the Spanish crown kidnapped black slaves to extract gold on the banks of the Atrato River. These prejudices reinforced the marginalization characteristic of the state’s understanding of the area.29 And these same margins were cited in various occupation projects, intended to connect Urabá with the white and thriving center of the country, via, for example, a road to the sea. This project, and other modernization plans, were governed by a logic of whitening, with a view to improving the area by “homogenizing the race.”30 One such project was consolidated with the opening of the road to the sea (1954), and in 1959, the arrival of the United Fruit Company, infamous for the massacre of workers in the Magdalena in 1928 memorialized by Garcia Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude. With the support of local investors, the region was completely occupied by banana plantations. As a result, monoculture has not only eroded the soils to the point where, through the years, the sea has swallowed up to 100 meters of the coastline, leaving small landowners homeless and landless,31 but has also led to violent processes of— to use Marx’s formulation—primitive accumulation of capital. Through these processes, the elites, with their great capacity for coercion, have dispossessed peasants of their land by legal and illegal means, forcing them to sell their labor and become obedient agrarian workers.32 The processes of primitive accumulation intensified with the development of banana plantations in Urabá in the 1970s, anti-communist programs aimed at containing the expansion of leftist ideas in Latin America, and projects presumed to bring progress to the region. These programs gave rise to security policies that fiercely combated insurgencies, heavily present in the area, and persecuted all trade union organizations and forms of protest as a threat to national security. The United Fruit Company, which later became Chiquita Brands (1990), together with local elites, financed the formation and consolidation of counterinsurgency paramilitary armies that, for decades and to this day, have defended their interests through violence and organized the

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systematic territorial dispossession of hundreds of peasants, forcing them to leave their land through forms of terror: massacres, the targeted assassination of social leaders, continuous threats, and various forms of coercion.33 Massacres, in all their terrifying excess, became part of daily life in Urabá in the 1990s34—a daily life experienced in the inscriptions of terror on spaces, times, and bodies. Residents of Urabá had to live amid corpses—often mutilated—left in streets, soccer fields, and sidewalks, and were haunted by their terrifying images. Forced to survive among destroyed houses with walls riddled with bullets and covered in graffiti, they were constantly reminded of the authorship of death. Their plantations were devastated, they suffered restrictions on daily movement, and were recommended not to be in certain places or at certain times. People lived under the threat of sudden harm (rape, torture, persecution, murder), and the plague of rumors that circulated uncontrolled, which could lethally incriminate them by placing them on the blacklist. Checkpoints continuously monitored their mobility and interrupted it, while they were often forced to move or to watch others leave, abandoning their homes and land. They thus endured a confinement of space and of their field of action. Urabá became a “geography of terror,”35 with the different methods of reproducing the dominance of terror assumed as exceptional measures necessary to secure and regularize the area. The exception then became the rule. In any case, this exceptionality also asserted itself, if we consider Walter Benjamin’s formulation, as a sort of “foundational violence.” This violence served to affirm a legal order, while authorizing forms of territorial emptying necessary for the accumulation of corporate capital, and provided the required security conditions for the development of megaprojects and agribusinesses in the region.36 In fact, once settled in this area, paramilitary groups, in association with military forces, promoted a discourse of occupation and state control, took possession of community action boards, created others, and even gave life to “social development brigades.”37 Moreover, through successive processes of institutional formalization, including projects anchored to the idea of a “post-conflict” context, these interventions have been legalized, and have been erasing their violent history, as well as the ruinous effects they have brought to the territories. Violence thus runs through these institutional mechanisms, and even ends up being legitimized by some of them. Hence, as argued by Jacobo Grajales, “agrarian capitalism” in the country has been fueled both by explicit war practices and by legal institutional arrangements legitimizing accumulation processes realized through violent interventions.

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The Ruination of Peasant Life As is evident from the previous section, the techniques of terror and territorial emptying that characterize a politics of death are inscribed in bodies and spaces, leaving numerous ruins in their wake: destroyed houses, burned plantations, abandoned places, traumatized subjects, confined, dispossessed, and fractured experiences and ways of life. These ruins affirm the inscription of violence in the materiality of things, in the memories of bodies, the landscapes, the territories they inhabit. These are a figure of what remains. This accent on what is left has been examined by Ann Stoler in her considerations on “ruination.” Ruination indicates both the site of multiple damages, as well as the processes that have produced them. Ruination is thus not only constituted by the “active forces of destruction”;38 but also, their material effects on bodies, spaces, and temporalities.39 In this section, I will focus on some of the ruinous effects that a policy of death has had on peasant life. By the latter, following the work of the RaiZal collective, I understand “the practical and everyday expression of an ecology of life40 specific to rural people who inhabit a particular region, and in which territorial, political, economic and cultural relations are integrated.”41 In order to undertake this reflection in all its materiality, I will examine certain experiences of those living in the northern Cauca (Colombia). This region is populated mainly by people who recognize themselves as Afro-descendants or indigenous,42 and whose history has been strongly marked by “racialized production relations” deeply rooted in colonialism.43 The strong presence of the Afro population in the area can be traced back to colonial times, when black slaves were forced to work on haciendas in the region and for the Popayan elite.44 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the first decades of the twentieth century, many of these haciendas became plantations dedicated to commercial agriculture, particularly the monoculture of sugarcane.45 Sugarcane was the dominant crop in the Cauca valley, and was promoted by elites from the city of Cali, who considered the northern Cauca a peripheral region subordinate to the city. This subordination was also inscribed in projects intended to develop the region beginning in the 1970s and continuing the following decade. As researched by anthropologist Alhena Caicedo, at that time, the northern part of the Cauca underwent notable transformations as a result of modernization projects promoted by regional elites seeking to better position themselves in international markets by building infrastructure and increasing agro-industrial production of the sugarcane monoculture. These objectives drove “the monopolization of land” and the “progressive expulsion of the black population to the hillsides or their confinement in populated settlements.”46 A milestone in this history of enclosure and expulsion was the

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construction of the Salvajina dam. Completed in 1985, the dam had a dual purpose: first, to prevent the river from flooding which would damage the sugarcane monoculture, and second, to supply electricity to nearby cities. To build it, a territory of 2,124 hectares was flooded, directly affecting peasant communities.47 These peasant communities lost the land most suitable for agriculture and artisanal gold mining and had to give up navigation and fishing on the Cauca River, eliminating multiple sources of their livelihood at once. They also lost rural roads and routes along the river, which had connected neighbors and family members. The river’s natural flood rhythms both paralleled certain fishing periods and maintained the native forest, from which the communities obtained timber and animals for hunting.48 As a result, many peasants were left with no option but to move to the cities, while others were pressured to sell their land at very low prices. The dam resulted in a great deal of environmental damage: construction of the reservoir brought a change in the area’s average temperature, the erosion of riverbanks, the disappearance of native species, a loss of biodiversity,49 and the erasure of cultural assemblages that peasant life had built in the territory. For example, many birds linked to wetlands and forests, fundamental to peasant farming practices by dispersing seeds and diversifying crops, disappeared,50 while sugarcane plantations began to spread over wetlands, forests, and neighboring peasant territories. This expansion of monoculture affected food crops through the use of pesticides and an increase in fires. Many small Afro-Colombian landowners were pressured to sell their land at very low prices and move to urban centers, to work with precarious salaries and in undignified conditions.51 Some were then recruited to grow and harvest coca for the drug trafficking business, which began to take hold in the area in the early 2000s. Although Salvajina produced energy for urban centers in Cauca, Valle, and Caldas, and has made it possible to sell energy abroad, nearby villages such as Pureto were only able to access the service—and a very deficient one at that—more than twenty years later following multiple popular protests. In fact, since the beginning of construction of the dam and years following, many mobilizations protesting the project and its effects were brutally persecuted and repressed by the public forces, in association with paramilitary and mafia networks.52 Thus, as in many parts of the country, this development project, led by regional elites and authorized by the state, had deeply unequal effects, favoring certain social sectors while particularly harming racialized people and their peasant life practices. In fact, as outlined by Caicedo, the system of private property in the region has also functioned racially, as black settlers have usually lacked land titles, been constantly subjected to forms of displacement and illegal land appropriation, and repeatedly undercounted and rendered invisible in demographic studies.53 Such practices reveal a form of

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“environmental racism” or “spatialized racism”54 which reproduces inequality so as to favor large capitals while ecologically and politically ruining local communities. This destruction of peasant life has been further consummated with the spread of drug trafficking in northern Cauca, which now moves large amounts of undeclared capital, much of which sustains the legal economy and is laundered by it. If in the early 2000s, the displaced peasants were involved in coca production, later, it became more profitable to pressure them, often violently, to sell their farms and occupy them as “raspachines.”55 Drug trafficking has produced forms of land dispossession and land grabbing,56 and brought a brutal increase of violence in the region as a result of territorial conflicts between mafias and their practices of informal and diffuse warfare, clashes between gangs, and the involvement of guerrillas and paramilitaries. Meanwhile, coca monocultures have caused significant ecological damage, such as the contamination of land and water sources by the chemicals they require, and the consequent impact on fishing and the use of water for irrigation and consumption. These effects also accentuate the loss of food sovereignty for the inhabitants of the area.57 The damage to the ecosystem is compounded by the damage caused by industrial (non-artisanal) mining in the territories—in particular, alluvial gold extraction has broadened the gaping inequality between overexploited miners and intermediaries.58 The profit from these mining operations was not invested in the region, while at the same time these projects also polluted water sources, fundamental for peasant subsistence. The inequalities caused and reproduced by development projects in northern Cauca have created dense national and international networks (both legal and illegal) and resulted in vicious cycles that have increasingly exploited and ruined the ecosystems connected with peasant life. At the same time, such a framework has rendered invisible the devices of dispossession through which forms of spoliation and destruction of life have taken place. Here we can see that the mechanisms of a politics of death are not reduced to the stripping of rights or the killing of certain bodies, but that they transform and devastate a whole field of possibilities deployed in vital territorialized frameworks. REBUILDING LIFE IN THE MIDST OF RUINATION: RESISTANT RE-EXISTENCES In this last section, I will refer to certain practices of resistance to the devices of domination typical of the politics of death. As I previously suggested, I emphasize the idea of “ruination” in order to account for the sedimentation of injustices and brutality produced by colonial capitalist projects. Moreover,

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this destruction accumulates not as dead matter or fixed devastation, but as “active forces.”59 In considering these forces, we must note their territorial, bodily, and psychic effects and their eventual “vital refiguration.”60 Ruination refers, then, to the “deeply saturated” and often scarcely visible forms “in which colonialisms leave their mark.”61 Such inscriptions affect “the lives of those whose sensibilities have been marked by the ruins in which they live,” amid countless “foreclosed possibilities” produced by imperial formations, with their structures of “vulnerability, damage, and refusal.”62 These structures have subjected colonized bodies and spaces while enclosing their relationships in apparently interminable cycles of violence. Amid these processes of ruination, however, new capacities and resistances to practices of domination can also emerge.63 As I have argued elsewhere,64 forms of power and domination are heterogeneous, as they always presuppose and occur through complex relations. Given this heterogeneity, subjections not only fail to completely saturate the field of action, but also turn out to have “little control over what they thought they were controlling.”65 In this way, their boundaries can be crossed and fractured in unforeseeable ways through various forms of resistance. The idea of ruination is thus about recognizing the effects of damage on the assemblages that make up a way of life, but also the way in which bodies can counteract the destruction they have suffered for generations. They do so by confronting the conditions of such damages and their consequences, deploying practices that allow them to recompose relationships amid what remains, but also to weave new bonds, and to elaborate diagnoses of and proposals for repairing the deep alterations their ways of live have suffered. Thinking in terms of these processes of ruination allows us to assume these struggles historical depth and complex spatiality, but also their creative and transformative nature. In particular, I am considering the struggles for territory that peasant movements have engaged in, for several decades, in southern Colombia and in the Colombian Pacific. These struggles have also influenced urban mobilizations, such as those that took place in the national strikes of 2019 and 2021 against neoliberal economic initiatives. These demonstrations were identified, for example, under the term “minga”—a notion fundamental to the country’s indigenous communities, derived from the Quechua word Minka, which alludes to collective work, an organization of many people, intended to care for, strengthen, and defend the different networks that make up the life of a territory, be it rural or urban. In this way, minga can also be applied to a mobilization meant to defend territory. In fact, the indigenous struggle for land has been practiced “in the form of a minga” since the 1970s. And since “the mid-2000s, the call for minga has become a strategy to counter armed violence and extractivist violence.”66 Owing to the interactions resulting

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from indigenous movements marching from the south of the country to the center, the minga was joined by various social organizations (peasants, workers, feminists, students), critical of the effects of neoliberal interventions, and their colonial roots, on rural life. In 2008, the indigenous Minga was transformed into the Minga for Social and Community Resistance, a broad and heterogeneous popular movement united against the forms of territorial dispossession, precarity, and destruction experienced in Colombia, most intensely since the 1990s. For these organizations, territory is asserted as a living space. This space is reread, reinvented, and reappropriated through economic, political, ritual, imaginative practices, in which sensibilities are shaped. What is considered valuable is created and reconfigured; and new assemblages are composed, based on a deep understanding of interdependence and vulnerability. Territory is, then, a space that is geographical, affective, and memorial, understood as being constantly in process. It is also constantly territorialized, amid conflicts, power games, uncertainties, and instabilities.67 Territory is thus inhabited, experienced, and recognized through praxis and this requires the knowledge of how to exist in-between, asserting the often-complex codependence between humans and nonhumans crossed by marks, damages, incarnated violence, dangers, and possibilities. Thus, from this point of view, to live is to be able to compose such territorial arrangements. The notion of “vivir sabroso” (living well), a key concept for the communities of the Colombian Pacific, is a vivid example of this. As anthropologist Natalia Quiceno,68 has shown, it refers to a “a poetics of life,” produced in the heightened awareness of vulnerability, and deployed through prayer; rituals with the dead; medicinal practices such as the ombligada;69 the capacity to perceive the contrasts between hot and cold through bodies, atmospheres, and soils; the healing of diseases; and the relationship with movement in nature. This interrelationship between life and territory, the way in which life is composed in territorialized assemblages, also became visible in urban processes, such as those that occurred in the national strike of 2021. In this episode, highly marginalized people in the cities blocked roads and used these spaces to organize sites of resistance, composed of popular assemblies, community kitchens, potluck dinners, urban vegetable gardens, and popular libraries. This web of relationships asserted the co-dependence of bodies, their need for care, the desire to produce and re-signify public frameworks captured by neoliberal privatization, the right to communal decision making on matters of general concern, and the need to find creative ways to deal with these conflicts. These are creative and experimental processes of resistance, in which resisting involves elaborating proposals to re-exist, to rethink what it means to live together with dignity in the midst of intense processes of ruination. In

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this sense, these resistance processes do not only “resist against dispossession and de-territorialization: they redefine their forms of existence through emancipation movements, by reinventing their identities, their ways of thinking, their modes of production and their livelihoods.”70 For this reason the notion of dignified life that these movements elaborate does not allude to an idyllic, uncontested, harmonious state, free of power dynamics. Rather, it refers to a livable life based on a dignity that is always performative: it must be deployed in sustainable and sustaining economic practices, health services, social security, food sovereignty, and the right to decide on fundamental issues that concern existence in a territory, while also allowing for the possibility of disputes and antagonism. Examples of notions arising from this framework could be the argument for the supreme importance of water and its valorization as a common good, which should be unable to be privatized; or to create, as has been done, a complex idea of life making it possible to diagnose neoliberalism as a politics of death. These are formulations produced by movements that articulate and understand themselves in the midst of their struggles against dispossession and the destruction of territorial life. The struggles to rebuild life in the midst of what is left are thus creating other futures marked by so many past existences erased and swept away by the train of progress. Returning to Benjamin’s image, we can consider this neoliberal violence and its modernization projects, imposed as an inexorable fate, as an uncontrollable storm that makes its full force felt on fragile, vulnerable human and animal bodies; on the things and spaces that they care about, and on natural environments that end up being further polluted and devastated. In considering this devastation, we can again turn to García Márquez’s description of a whirlwind: “The whirlwind was implacable . . . In less than a year it sowed over the town the rubble of many catastrophes that had come before it, scattering its mixed cargo of rubbish in the streets”71 Against the odds, and thanks to multiple efforts to counteract violence and its devastating effects, the future is being pieced together amid rubble and debris. These futures are buried in thousands of opaque and jumbled layers, overlapping, unfolding sideways, in circles and spirals, up and down. They look from the past and to the present; calling out to the ghosts of memory and reviving forgotten voices to claim what could not be. These anachronistic expectations that continue to drive the desire for another world yet to come. It is from here that we weave and recompose, in new imaginative endeavors, the efforts to resist by re-existing. As thinkers and academics, it is up to us to come together with all those striving to compose this future in common.

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NOTES 1. Márquez, Territorio, 12–13. 2. Mbembe, “Necropolitics.” 3. Banerjee, “Necrocapitalism.” 4. Haskaj, “From biopower to Necroeconomies.” 5. Escobar, Encountering Development. 6. Escobar, Encountering Development, 111. 7. Goldsmith, “Development as Colonialism.” 8. Bhandar, Colonial Lives of Property, 3–6. 9. Mbembe, “Necropolitics.” 10. Haskaj, “From biopower to Necroeconomies, 1151. 11. Haskaj “From biopower to Necroeconomies,” 1163; Banerjee, “Necrocapitalism,” 1542. 12. Das and Poole, “State and Its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies”; Serje, “El mito de la ausencia del Estado.” 13. Agamben, Homo sacer I; Agamben, L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale. 14. Serje, “El mito de la ausencia del Estado.” 15. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 22, 28. 16. Peck and Tickell, “Neoliberalizing Space.” 17. In Sayak Valencia’s words: “‘gore capitalism’ refers to the undisguised and unjustified bloodshed that is the price the Third World pays for adhering to the increasingly demanding logic of capitalism.” It also refers to the “many instances of dismembering and disembowelment, often tied up with organized crime, gender, and the predatory uses of bodies. In general, this term posits these incredibly brutal kinds of violence as tools of necroempowerment” (Valencia, Gore Capitalism, 12). 18. Ballvé, The Frontier Effect. 19. Caicedo, “Vida campesina y modelo de desarrollo,” 62. 20. See: https:​//​forensic​-architecture​.org​/investigation​/land​-dispossession​-in​-nueva​ -colonia. 21. See: https:​//​forensic​-architecture​.org​/investigation​/land​-dispossession​-in​-nueva​ -colonia. 22. Grajales, Agrarian Capitalism, 17. 23. Aparicio, Rumores, residuos y Estado en “la mejor esquina de Sudamérica”; Ballvé, The Frontier Effect. 24. Ballvé, The Frontier Effect. 25. Serje, “El mito de la ausencia del Estado.” 26. Ballvé, The Frontier Effect, 24. 27. Ballvé, The Frontier Effect, 26. 28. Ballvé, The Frontier Effect, 24. 29. Ballvé, The Frontier Effect, 25–26. 30. Ballvé, The Frontier Effect, 27. 31. See: https:​//​forensic​-architecture​.org​/investigation​/land​-dispossession​-in​-nueva​ -colonia. 32. Ballvé, The Frontier Effect, 33.

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33. For example, according to the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica (CNMH), 167,178 people were displaced in Urabá between 1989 and 1996. See: https:​ //​ centrodememoriahistorica​.gov​.co​/tag​/uraba​/. 34. For an idea of the magnitude of this daily terror, consider the fact that, according to CNMH figures, some 52 massacres were perpetrated in Urabá between 1994 and 1999. See: https:​//​centrodememoriahistorica​.gov​.co​/tag​/uraba​/. 35. Oslender, Geografías del terror en Colombia. 36. Ballvé, The Frontier Effect, 129. 37. Ballvé, The Frontier Effect, 60. 38. Stoler, Duress, 194. 39. Quintana, Rabia: afectos, violencia, inmunidad. 40. Ingold, Tim. “Culture, Nature, Environment. Steps to an Ecology of Life.” 41. Caicedo, “Vida campesina y modelo de desarrollo,” 62. 42. According to the 2005 national census, 67.11 percent of the inhabitants identify themselves as Afro-descendant and nearly 27 percent as indigenous: https:​//​etnoterritorios​.org​/apc​-aa​-files​/92335f7b3cf47708a7c984a309402be7​/cartilla​ _poblaciones​_negras​_en​_el​_norte​_del​_cauca​.pdf. The data from the most recent national census of 2018 are not taken into account, as the country’s black communities denounced its methodology, claiming that it failed to consider 30 percent of their population. 43. Caicedo, “Vida campesina y modelo de desarrollo,” 62. 44. See: https:​//​etnoterritorios​.org​/apc​-aa files/92335f7b3cf47708a7c984a30940 2be7/cartilla_poblaciones_negras_en_el_norte_del_cauca.pdf. 45. Caicedo, “Vida campesina y modelo de desarrollo,” 64. 46. Caicedo, “Vida campesina y modelo de desarrollo,” 64. 47. See: https:​//​pbicolombiablog​.org​/2016​/11​/29​/la​-salvajina​/​#:​​~:​text​=Seg​%C3​ %BAn​%20el​%20estudio​%20de​%20​%C3​%89rika​,de​%20La​%20Salvajina​%20es​ %20ambivalente. 48. Torres, Rátiva, and Salcedo, “Agroindustria y extractivismo en el Alto Cauca.” 49. See: https:​//​ejatlas​.org​/conflict​/represa​-la​-salvajina​-colombia. 50. Torres, Rátiva, and Salcedo, “Agroindustria y extractivismo en el Alto Cauca,” 175. 51. Torres, Rátiva, and Salcedo, “Agroindustria y extractivismo en el Alto Cauca,” 176 52. Gonzáles, Bajo el foco. 53. Caicedo, “Vida campesina y modelo de desarrollo,” 91. 54. Torres et all 2013, “Agroindustria y extractivismo en el Alto Cauca,” 168. 55. Raspachines are the workers who remove the leaves from the coca bush with their hands. 56. Caicedo, “Vida campesina y modelo de desarrollo,” 77. 57. Caicedo, “Vida campesina y modelo de desarrollo,” 79. 58. Caicedo, “Vida campesina y modelo de desarrollo,” 67. 59. Stoler, Duress, 194. 60. Stoler, Duress, 194. 61. Stoler, Imperial Debris, x.

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62. Stoler, Imperial Debris, x; Stoler, Duress, 347. 63. Quintana, Alternatives in the Midst of Ruination. 64. Quintana, The Politics of Bodies. 65. Rancière, The Method of Equality, 61. 66. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, Tiempos de vida y muerte. 67. Porto and Leff, “Political Ecology in Latin America,” 72. 68. Quiceno, Vivir sabroso. 69. The ‘ombligada’ is an ancestral practice of some black communities of the Colombian Pacific. It consists of burying the umbilical cord, “the navel” of the newborn, to trigger the process of “cultural socialization.” With this, it is thought that the sense of community immersed in a place—the territory—is created. Thus, this practice reveals an understanding of the territory as a vital space: as a conjunction between land and life, characteristic of existence in the Afro-Colombian Pacific (see: https:​ //​diaspora​.com​.co​/la​-ombligada​-es​-una​-practica​-ancestral​-de​-algunas​-comunidades​ -negras​/). 70. Porto and Leff, “Political Ecology in Latin America,” 73. 71. Gabriel García Márquez, Leaf Storm.

REFERENCES Agamben, Giorgio. Homo sacer I. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita. Torino: Enaudi, 1995. ———. L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002. Ballvé, Teo. The Frontier Effect. State Formation and Violence in Colombia. London: Cornell University Press, 2020. Bhandar, Brenna. Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Banerjee, Subhabrata Bobby. “Necrocapitalism.” Organization Studies 29, no 12 (2008): 1541–63. Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone, 2015. Caicedo, Alhena. “Vida campesina y modelo de desarrollo: configuraciones de despojo/ privilegio en el norte del Cauca.” Revista Colombiana De Antropología, 53, no 1 (2017), 59–89. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.22380​/2539472X​.3. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Tiempos de vida y muerte: memorias y luchas de los pueblos indígenas en Colombia. Bogotá: CNMH, 2019. Das, Veena, and Deborah Poole. “State and Its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies.” In Anthropology in the margins of the State. Edited, by Veena Das and Deborah Poole. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: the Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995. Gabriel García Márquez, Leaf Storm. Translated by Gregory Rabassa. London: Harper Perennial, 2005.

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Goldsmith, Edward. “Development as Colonialism.” In The Case Against the Global Economy. Edited by Jerry Mander. London: Routledge, 2001. Gonzáles Erika. Bajo el foco. Unión FENOSA. Los impactos de la multinacional eléctrica en Colombia. Bogotá: OMAL - Paz con Dignidad, 2008. Grajales, Jacobo. Agrarian Capitalism, War and Peace in Colombia Beyond Dispossession. London: Routledge, 2021. Haskaj, Fatmir “From biopower to Necroeconomies: Neoliberalism, Biopower and Death Economies. Philosophy and Social Criticism 44, no 10 (2018):1148–68. Ingold, Tim. “Culture, Nature, Environment. Steps to an Ecology of Life.” In The Perception of the Environment, 13–26. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Márquez, Francia. “El territorio es vida.” In Territorio. Bogotá: Futuro en tránsitoComisión de la verdad de Colombia. Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15, no 1 (2003): 11–40. Oslender, Ulrich. Geografías del terror en Colombia. Comunidades negras y espacio en el Pacífico colombiano. Hacia un giro geográfico en el estudio de los movimientos sociales. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, 2008. Peck, Jamie, and Adam Tickell. “Neoliberalizing Space.” Antipode 34, no. 3 (2002): 380–404. Porto, Walter, and Enrique Leff. “Political Ecology in Latin America: the Social Re-Appropriation of Nature, the Reinvention of Territories and the Construction of an Environmental Rationality.” Desenvolv. Meio Ambiente, v. 35 (2015): 65–88. Quiceno, Natalian. Vivir Sabroso: luchas y movimientos afroatrateños, en Bojayá, Chocó, Colombia. Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad del Rosario, 2016. Quintana, Laura. The Politics of Bodies: Philosophical Emancipations with and beyond Rancière. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. ———. Rabia: afectos, violencia, inmunidad. Herder: 2021. ———. “Alternatives in the Midst of Ruination: Capitalism, Heterogeneity, Fractures.” Critical Times 5 no 1 (2022): 50–75. Serje, Margarita. “El mito de la ausencia del Estado: la incorporación económica de las “zonas de frontera” en Colombia. Cahiers des Amériques latines 71 (2013): 95–117. Stoler, Ann Laura. Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. ———, ed. Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Torres, Irene; Rátiva, Sandra and Salcedo, Andrés. “Agroindustria y extractivismo en el Alto Cauca. Impactos sobre los sistemas de subsistencia afrocampesinos y resistencias (1950–2011).” Revista CS, no 12 (2013): 157–88. DOI:10.18046/recs. i12.1680. Valencia, Sayak. Gore Capitalism. Translated by John Pluecker. Cambridge: Semiotext(e), 2018.

Index

Ahmed, Sarah, 26, 32, 71, 80 agrarian capitalism, 150 alt-right populism. See alt-right populists, 31 anthropological turn, 23–24, 28 anxiety, 69, 75–77, 90, 92–93, 96, 113 Argentina, xii austerity, viii, xi, 46, 86, 107 authoritarianism, 25, 76 autonomy, 47, 52, 66, 105–9, 120, 126–27, 134 basic economic rights, 32 Becker, Gary, 5–6, 51, 116 beliefs and values, 4–5, 15–17 bodies, vii, ix–xi, 24, 29, 36, 68, 77, 88–91, 95, 97, 113, 120, 125, 131, 143–44, 146, 150–51, 153–56; control of, 109; government of, 106; unavailability of, 120 body-governing techniques, 119 Bologna, Sergio, 108 Brazil, 87 Brown, Wendy, 106 Burnout, 75, 114 Butler, Judith, xii, 33, 120 capitalist realism, 67 Chile, vii, 51, 87

clinical psychology, 55–56, 58 Colombia, xii–xiii, 137, 143–44, 147– 48, 151, 154–55 competition, 4, 13, 26, 33, 52, 54, 67–68, 73, 85, 87, 96, 98, 106, 111, 114, 146 contemporary transformations of work, xii contradictory class location, 36 COVID-19 pandemic, 28, 80, 87, 127 crisis of labor, 109 critical empathy, 27–28 Dejours, Christophe, 27, 114–15 democracy, 26, 34–35, 51–52, 106 democratic workplace, 26, 28 depressive disorders, 59–60 dignified death, 125, 131 discontent, 66, 77, 79, 109, 146 dispossession, ix, 48, 130, 134, 147–48, 150, 153, 155–56 economic suffering, 24 economic vitality, 115 economy of obedience, 36 employability, 70, 112–13, 118 exclusion, 10, 34, 106, 110, 116, 120, 143, 146 161

162

exploitation, ix–x, xiii, 48, 54, 87, 98, 110, 108, 119, 133, 149 Fanon, Frantz, 91 finance economy, 29 first-order suffering, 15, 17 Fisher, Mark, 66–67, 70–71, 74, 76, 78, 80, 113 Fordism, 107–8, 113 Foucault, Michel, 32, 65, 105–6, 110, 116, 145 Fricker, Miranda, 28 Friedman, Milton, 51 Gago, Verónica, 85–86 Gambetti, Zeynep, 25 gender violence, 25 geography of terror, 150 German ordo-liberalism, 50 Global North, viii–ix Global South, viii–ix, 28, 147 good institution, 35–36 good life, 3–9 governmental management, 69 Hayek, Friedrich von, 5, 8–14, 16, 50–51, 53 homo oeconomicus, xi, 11, 24–25, 36 Honneth, Axel, 9, 35 hopeless subject, 75 housing financialization, 29–30 human capital, xi, 54, 69, 93, 106, 116–17 humans, vii, x, 24, 28, 143, 155 Hume, David, 27, 46 immanent critique of capitalism, 23–24 immigrant workers, 26, 29 imperative of happiness, 32, 69–70, 72 indigenous struggle, 154 intensification of working activity, 111 International Monetary Fund/IMF, vii, 45, 87 Jaeggi, Rahel, 23–24, 26, 35

Index

job-market. See labor market, 6, 12, 26, 109, 117, 118–19, 126 just life, 97–98 Latin America, vii, ix–xii, 87, 137, 149 labor equality, 34 labor exploitation, xiii labor law reform, 33 labor policies, 118 LGBTQI+ people, 16 liberalization of the market, 14 liberal governmentality, 68, 106, 108–9, 117 livable life, xii, 23, 26, 33, 156 Locke, John, 9, 46 López Obrador, Andrés Manuel, xi, 86–88 madness, 57–58 managerial working culture, 112 Marcuse, Herbert, 52 marginalized people, ix, 34, 155 Marx, Karl, 13, 149 materiality of life, 33 Mbembe, Achille, 144 mental health, ix, xiii, 77–79, 93, 109, 114 Mexico, xi, xiii, 87–88, 90, 95–96 Mises, Ludwig von, 48, 51 moral economy, 23, 29, 36, 47 moral psychology, 46–47, 49 necro-politics, xi neofascism, 25 neoliberal common sense, 91–93, 96–97 neoliberal cultural politics, x, 35 neoliberal ethics, 4–5, 7–8, 10–11, 14 neoliberal hegemony, xii, 46–47, 49 neoliberal ideology, 25 neoliberal powers, 67–68, 71 neoliberal reason. See neoliberal rationality, xi, xiii, 24, 36, 105–6 neoliberal societies, 67, 76–77, 105, 116, 120 neoliberal subjectivation, xi, 23

Index

neoliberal systemic doctrine, 3, 4, 7, 9–10, 12–13, 15–17 neurosis, xi, 59–60 non humans, vii, x, 155 objective contradiction, 50 occupational health, 113 peasant life, 151–53 Pinochet, Augusto, vii, 51 political agency, 24, 34 political imagination, 28 political subjectivation, 127 politics of death, xii, 143–44, 146–47, 151, 153, 156 Posner, Richard, 6 poverty, ix, 10, 74, 80, 89, 113, 126, 149 precariousness, ix, xii, 15, 69, 74–76, 147 precarity, 79, 112, 116, 127, 131, 146, 155 privatization of contradictions, 67, 74 privatization of public services, 17 psychic subjugation, 47 psychic suffering, 55, 57–59 psychological malaise, 16–17 psychological suffering, ix, xi, 15, 54–56, 58, 60–61, 69–70, 74–75, 77–80 psychologization, xi, 49; of society, 66 psy-disciplines, 66 psy-discourses, 66 psy-sciences, 66 racialized people, 31, 149, 152 rage, xi, xiii, 32, 90–91 real state firms, 25 real state violence, 28 recognition, 25, 35–36, 46, 49, 54–55, 58, 94–95, 97, 109, 114, 120, 127–29, 134 reproduction of life vii, xi, 58, 126, 134 Schmitt, Carl, 52 second-order suffering, 15–17

163

securitarian state, 146, 148 securitization, 95, 97 self-exploitation, xi, 71, 75, 77 Shklar, Judith, 27 Smith, Adam, 46 social insecurity, viii, 109, 119 social integration, 9 social life, xii, 24, 28, 31, 36, 46, 50, 52, 54, 56–58, 86–87 social pathologies, 9, 24–25, 32 social policies, xi, 11 social practices, 4, 24, 26, 34 social responsibility, 13, 117 social suffering, vii–viii, x, xii, 3, 9, 14–15, 17, 26–27, 32, 36, 47, 55, 58, 114 solidarity, xii, 7, 27, 30, 32, 34, 48, 54, 68, 73, 77, 111, 132–33 spaces of terror, 144 Spain, ix–x, xii, 23–25, 28–34, 87 street vending, 125–30, 132–14 structural racism, 25, 143 submission, 51–52 subprime mortgages, 30–31 Thatcher, Margaret, 49 trade unions, 33–34, 109 total state, 52 unemployment, 7, 16, 29, 33, 70, 74, 107, 112–13, 118 valuable life, 24 violence, ix, xi–xii, 5, 10–11, 14, 25, 28, 51–52, 54, 61, 75, 87–88, 91, 96–98, 106, 111, 115, 127, 129, 131, 143, 147–51, 153–56 vulnerability, xi, 24, 26, 97, 111, 154–55 Wacquant, Loïc, 119 welfare state, 3, 7, 46, 108, 110, 145 workfare, 118–19 work-value, 106 Zurn, Christopher, 24

About the Contributors

Laura Quintana is associate professor of the Department of Philosophy at the Universidad de Los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia). She has published several contributions in the areas of contemporary political philosophy and modern and contemporary aesthetics. Her recent research mainly addresses the aesthetic dimension of forms of power and emancipation and their effects on the world, from a trans-disciplinary approach based on a dialogue between a philosophy situated in Latin-America and contemporary views of anthropology and art. Among her most recent books are: (2022) Esos afectos voraces (Tusquets). (2021). Rabia: afectos, violencia, inmunidad. Barcelona: Herder. (2020) The Politics of Bodies. (2020). Políticas de los cuerpos. (2018). Mouvements sociaux et subjectivations politiques (coedited with A. Fjeld and E. Tassin); (2016). Intervenciones filosóficas en medio del conflicto: debates sobre la construcción de paz en Colombia hoy (coedited with D. Paredes, A. Fjeld, and Carlos Manrique); (2016). Cómo se forma un sujeto político: prácticas estéticas y acciones colectivas (coedited with Carlos Manrique). For other publications, see: https:​//​uniandes​.academia​.edu​/LauraQuintana. Alessandro Pinzani is professor of ethics and political philosophy at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis (Brazil) and since 2006 a fellow researcher of CNPq (Brazilian Research Council). He got his PhD and Habilitation in Philosophy at the University of Tübingen. He was a visiting professor at the universities of Dresden (2013), Bochum (2016 and 2020/21), Graz (2019 and 2021), and the Czech Academy of Sciences (2019). He was a visiting scholar at Columbia University (2001/02), the Humboldt University, Berlin (2010), and the University of Florence (2015/16). He writes on critical theory, social philosophy, poverty, and Kant’s political philosophy. Among his books: Jürgen Habermas (2007), An den Wurzeln moderner Demokratie (2009), Money, Autonomy, and Citizenship (with W. Leão Rego, 2018). He has coedited Kant and Social Policies (with Nuria Sanchez Madrid and 165

166

About the Contributors

Andrea Faggion, 2016) and Kant and the Contemporary World (with Luigi Caranti, 3 volumes, 2022). Zenia Yébenes has a PhD in Philosophy from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and a PhD in Anthropological Sciences from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. She is a full-time research professor in the Department of Humanities at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Cuajimalpa and tutor of the postgraduate programs in philosophy and philosophy of science (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). She is interested in the articulation between philosophy and social sciences. Her lines of research are: processes of subjectivation and theories, politics and disciplines of subjectivity. She is interested in borderline experiences and how subjectivation processes involve the emergence of sociohistorically situated spheres and experiences that are organized in different categories such as the rational and the irrational, the normal and the pathological, the conscious and the unconscious. Pablo López Álvarez is associate professor of the Department of Philosophy and Society at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). His main fields of work are modern philosophy, political theory and contemporary philosophy, with special focus on Frankfurt critical theory, the work of Michel Foucault and critical studies of neoliberalism. Member of the research group “Normativity, Emotions, Discourse and Society” (GINEDIS), he is also a researcher in the Society of Critical Theory Studies (SETC) and in the Ibero-american Foucault Network. He leads with Nuria Sánchez Madrid the Research Project “Labour Precarity, Body and Damaged Life. A Research on Social Philosophy” (2020–2024) and has been coordinator of the Advanced Master’s Degree in Philosophy at the UCM María Inés Fernández Álvarez is researcher at the Nacional Council of Researcher at Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET) and Professor of Anthropology at University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Currently, she is Vice Dean at Centro de Innovación de las y los Trabajadores (CITRA-CONICET-UMET). She is also Professor of the Master’s in Social Anthropology (FFL, UBA) and the Master’s in Social and Political Anthropology (FALCSO). She is the author of La política afectada. Experiencia, trabajo y vida cotidiana en Brukman recuperada (Prohistoria 2017), she cowrote Bajo Sospecha. Debates urgentes sobre las clases trabajadoras (Cooperativa Callao, 2019) and was the editor of Hacer juntos(as). Dinámicas, contornos y relieves de la política colectiva (Biblos, 2016) Her research focus to studying the relational dynamics that exist between the forms of domination and the processes of organization, mobilization and

About the Contributors

167

political claims carried out by subaltern sectors, especially the dynamics of union organization and the political practices carried out by the workers of the popular economy. Rodrigo Castro Orellana is associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Society in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid. His research has been focused on the study of contemporary philosophy, with special attention to the works of Michel Foucault and his reading of the technologies of government articulated by neoliberalism. Author of the book Foucault y el cuidado de la libertad: Ética para un rostro de arena (2008) and of Dispositivos neoliberales y resistencias (2023). Founder and Executive Director of the Ibero-American Foucault Network. Director of the Journal of Foucauldian Studies Dorsal and member of the editorial team of Foucault Studies Vladimir Safatle is professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Psychology at the University of São Paulo. He examines the relationship between philosophy and human sciences, especially psychoanalysis and psychology, in contemporary French thought and the Frankfurt School. He is also an expert in Lacanian thought and leftist politics. His research interests include Hegelian philosophy, post-Hegelian dialectical tradition, as well as the philosophy of music. Beyond this, Vladimir is responsible for the translation of Theodor W. Adorno’s complete works into Portuguese and for the coordination of the book series Explosante (Ubu Press). Nuria Sánchez Madrid is associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy (UCM). From 2017 she coordinates the Complutense Research Group 970798 “Normativity, Emotions, Discourse and Society” (GINEDIS). She is from 2019 Chairwoman of the Academic Society of Philosophy (Spain) and from 2018 coordinator of the Latin-American, Portuguese and Spanish Network RIKEPS. She is member of the Complutense Institute of Gender Studies and external member of the CFUL of Lisbon, of the Institute of Philosophy of Oporto, of the PhD Philosophy Program of the Univ. Roma Tre/Tor Vergata and of the Group of Ethics and Political Philosophy of the UFRN (Brazil). She has co-edited the volumes Kant and Social Policies, Kant’s Doctrine of Right in the Twenty-first Century, Kant on Emotions, and Rethinking Vulnerability and Exclusion.. Her key lines of research are history of philosophy and legal, political, and social philosophy.