Transcendence, fantasy and desire: the affective infrastructures of neoliberalism

My research critically engages with contemporary discourses of neoliberalism, a socio-economic doctrine associated with politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and with economists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. In general, neoliberalism is characterised by its belief in the primacy of markets, in the benefits of competition, in constraints on governmental intervention and in individual economic freedom. For neoliberal thinkers the market can solve all social problems. For example, neoliberals argue that climate catastrophe can be averted through carbon trading markets that incentivise ecological behaviour for multinational corporations. For its critics, neoliberalism has entrenched and extended global inequality, dispossession and poverty.

The global crises of the last fifteen years - from the 2008 financial crash, the 2016 Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump to the current COVID-19 pandemic - have been accompanied by proclamations about the end of neoliberalism. During these crises, even the governments most committed to non-interventionism have deviated from neoliberal diktat and suspended the primacy of the market. However, we keep being surprised by what Colin Crouch evocatively calls "the strange non-death of neoliberalism" (2011). To understand neoliberalism's persistence, we need to understand how neoliberal ideologies are embedded in institutions, imaginaries and everyday lives.

My project argues that to explain neoliberalism's longevity, we must understand its affective dimensions, psychic powers and embodied effects. We need to grasp how these ideas shape our desires and our ways of living together; how they may feel attractive, exciting or appealing while at the same time operating through mechanisms of exclusion, violence and disposession. My critical political economy approach complements existing sociological works on economic imaginaries (Beckert, 2016) and on the experience of economic orders (Dardot and Laval, 2010) with insights from psychoanalytical theory. I examine neoliberalism not just as an economic doctrine, but also as an affective infrastructure that mobilises fantasies of self-realisation, self-control, and self-transcendence.

My project has three branches. First, it complements the existing scholarship on neoliberal thought (Mirowski and Plehwe, 2009) by reinterpreting canonical texts of neoliberal theory (Hayek 2011a; 2011b; 2013; Becker 1976) through a psychoanalytically-informed theoretical framework. Second, I am interested in how tropes found in neoliberal economic theory (like the idea of risk-taking as self-realisation) are invested and transformed in popular culture; I will publish my research on two entrepreneurs close to the neoliberal movement, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Lastly, the project will also extend the claims made in my thesis via a broader scope of analysis that incorporates new sources that highlight how economics is practiced and imagined today, specifically recent pop-economics bestsellers (like the Freakonomics series) and discursive representations of financial instruments (like the VIX, a volatility index popularised as the 'fear index'). The overall aim of the project is to denaturalise so as to re-politicise these discursive productions, and thereby to practically contribute to the elaboration of new alternative imaginaries on the left.

It will do so by disseminating my research in academic circles via the publication of three peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, as well as the organisation of a conference at the University of East Anglia. To reach non-academic audiences, I will develop blogpost and podcast series about economic imaginaries with the Political Economy Research Centre. I will also organise a stakeholder workshop about neoliberal calls for the privatisation of space at the World Transformed 2023 Festival in partnership with the think-tank Common Wealth.