Neoliberal individualism is replacing group-based identity politics across society

Evidence

This movement from identity to individualism also seems characteristic of a broader social shift in ways of looking at empowerment. Nowadays, concern for egalitarianism and group rights is seen as less “sexy” than personal economic fulfillment as an active consumer. It remains to be seen how the inevitably widening inequalities produced by neoliberal economics react with what will by necessity become louder calls for redistributive justice. In one way or another, multiculturalism has proven remarkably durable, and claims of its demise are certainly exaggerated. However, in an era when Islamophobic policies are increasingly being adopted by governments in the United States and Europe, there must come a point where the targeted disciplining of those who are not deemed acceptable (and accepting) free-market subjects produces direct conflict. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 199

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s own work on Hamid: Changez’s embrace of American meritocracy/consumption before 9/11 is the ‘active consumer’ empowerment narrative Morey describes here — useful for framing the novel’s critique as internal contradiction. — connects to: Neoliberalism replaces class analysis with a cynical catechism of limitless self-transformation — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 332; Neoliberalism reflated the autonomous individual to break social democratic collectivism — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1944