Neoliberalism Reloaded: Authoritarian Governmentality and the Rise of the Radical Right

Neoliberalism Reloaded: Authoritarian Governmentality and the Rise of the Radical Right analyzes the violent enforcement of neoliberal governmentality and its relationship to the emergence of a new political and cultural Right that combines political authoritarianism, ethnocentric nationalism, racism, misogyny, and antifeminism with neoliberal economic principles. Many critical thinkers have defined this post-2008 crisis phase as a fascist moment of neoliberalism since far-Right movements and parties are not only enhancing their political representation but also setting the agenda of today’s politics. However, such a crucial political moment needs more precise analytical tools.

In this framework, Neoliberalism Reloaded: Authoritarian Governmentality and the Rise of the Radical Right seeks to understand the emergence of the New Right and punitive neoliberalism not only as a reaction to a crisis of accumulation but also as an outcome of neoliberal reason and the historical neoliberal alliance with conservative and reactionary political forces. Therefore, far from thinking this moment as exceptional, this book seeks the roots of today’s punitive neoliberalism in its theoretical framework and in the violence inherent to neoliberal capitalism towards those racialized, colonized, genderized and precarized populations that cannot adjust to the norm of competitiveness. Thus, Neoliberalism Reloaded seeks to contribute to understanding the challenges of our present as a necessary step to imagine alternative futures.

Matías Saidel has obtained his PhD in Theoretical and Political Philosophy (2011) with a thesis on the ontological and impolitical perspectives on the common developed by Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito. Currently he works as Researcher at the Argentinean National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and as Professor of Political Philosophy and Researcher at the Faculty of Social Work of the National University of Entre Ríos, Argentina. He has also taught postgraduate seminars on the Common and on Neoliberal Capitalism at the National University of Rosario, National University of Comahue and National University of Entre Ríos (Argentina) and was a visiting scholar at Cornell University (2010) and Madrid Complutense University (2018). He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the common(s), neoliberalism and biopolitics. He has also edited a book of interviews with the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito.