Liminalities: Social Vulnerabilities Between Participatory Processes and Digital Space in the Neoliberal Era
From Firenze University Press Journal: SocietàMutamentoPolitica
Maria Cristina Antonucci, CNR
Michele Sorice, Sapienza University of Rome
Andrea Volterrani, University of Rome Tor Vergata
Scholarly discourse at the global level has extensively addressed the con-cept of the neoliberal city (Pinson and Morel Journel 2016), highlighting distinctive features in the context of the United States (Hackworth 2019) as well as in selected European case studies (Chevalier 2023). Earlier, the work of Henry Lefebvre (1999) highlighted the role of urban spaces as relational places, while David Harvey’s analysis focused on the disruptive role of neo-liberalism in the transformation of cities.Understanding the directions of cities’ development and their relationships with transformations in the public sphere is impossible unless viewed within the broader framework of neoliberalism. However, defining neoliberalism is necessary, since there remain, even in the academic literature, several ambigui-ties that often result from ideological differences. Particularly, we can identify different interpretative frameworks and at least two defining ambiguities.
- THE PROBLEMATIC NATURE OF DEFINITIONS
The first ambiguity refers to an (increasingly narrow) area that considers neo-liberalism a sort of “invention” by those who would not have understood that it is nothing more than an evolutionary direction of liberalism. In this case, a conceptual overlap between classical liberalism and contemporary neo-liberalism is produced, often in bad faith. However, this is a stretch, since neo-liberalism is based on conceptual assumptions and economic practices very different from those of clas-sical liberalism. The second defining ambiguity interprets neo-liberalism as a set of monetary economic policies, based on austerity logics, substantial marketisation of public life and “commodification” of social relations. A third perspective — which turns out to be more convinc-ing — is one that assumes neoliberalism as a global politi-cal rationality that inverts the logic of capital, making it the new normal of social organisation, «to the point of making it the form of subjectivity and the norm of exist-ence» (Dardot and Laval 2019: 5). This new global ration-ality not only reproduces social inequalities, but above all feeds itself with the systemic crises that it itself produces, and whose only (apparent) way out is the paradoxical re-proposition of those same recipes that provoked the permanent state of crisis, since «neoliberalism reproduc-es itself as it is» (Pope Francis 2020: 168). The idea that neo-liberalism constitutes global political rationality is consistent with the perspective of those who consider it a social image. Indeed, neoliberal global rationality can decline as an imagination that arises as an outcome of the narrative forms of new social stratifications. It feeds a reservoir of narratives that have also become established because of communicative ecosystems in which the struggle for control of opinion has become a diriment.The use of the concept of the “imaginary” to define neoliberalism is also useful in terms of its application to “spaces” and “territories”. Manfred Steger, for example, defines social imaginaries as «macromappings of social and political space through which we perceive, judge and act in the world, this mode of deep understanding provides the more general parameters within which peo-ple imagine their communal existence» (Steger 2008: 6; see also Blokker 2022).It is precisely within the horizon of the neoliberal imaginary that new buzzwords have emerged, mostly related to the value of governance and its application. The success of the concept of “governmentality” rep-resents an important step in affirming the new global rationality of neoliberalism. The concept of governmen-tality has progressively replaced that of governance. It is perceived to be too closely linked to a medium- to long-term political project and, therefore, intrinsically dangerous because it was inevitably based on a kind of “democratic design”. Governmentality has thus become rooted in values typical of business, such as competition, self-interest and the “need” for strong decentralisation, understood as the possibility of individual empower-ment and the substantial devolution of central state pow-er to local units that are more easily controlled (if only because of their size). At this level, one notes the weight of depoliticisation processes located at the intersection of different variables and constitutes an important point of convergence between new technocratic paradigms and contemporary populism. This is an unexpected conver-gence, but one that is not surprising, especially consid-ering the development of what has been termed “gov-ernment populisms”, especially in the context of right-wing or centre-right governments. Even the rhetoric on the “light state” has been contradicted by instances of the “neo-liberalisation of the state”, which has become “heavy” again, provided that it benefits the few; Yves Sintomer (2010) had lucidly foreseen this, effectively pointing out that the light state is such, in reality, on the social and economic level, but not on the military level where, on the contrary, the increase in expenditure and “weight” has led to a true hypertrophy of the system. This political horizon includes hyper-securitarian drives, the demonisation of democratic conflict (Harvey 2005) and the substantial expulsion of vulnerable or fragile subjects from public life.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-15505
Read Full Text: https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/smp/article/view/15505
