Neoliberalism’s plasticity prevents treating its current Euro-Atlantic form as essential truth

Evidence

Notwithstanding these diverse instantiations, for reasons that will become clear, I will be more concerned to stipulate a meaning for “neo-liberalism” than for “democracy” in this work. However, these aspects of neoliberalism—its unevenness, its lack of self-identity, its spatial and temporal variability, and above all, its availability to reconfiguration — are important to underscore in an argument focused on its iteration in the time we may call contemporary and the place we may call the Euro-Atlantic world. Alertness to neoliberalism’s inconstancy and plasticity cautions against identifying its current iteration as its essential and global truth and against making the story I am telling a teleological one, a dark chapter in a steady march toward end times. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 30

Categorization

• XREF: This anti-teleological caution connects to debates about whether critique of neoliberalism inadvertently reifies it — Dardot & Laval, and Foucault’s own anti-teleological method. — connects to: Foucault’s governmentality concept may itself be a cog in the neoliberal regime of truth — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1951; Neoliberalism’s deliberate epistemic inconsistencies enabled its long-term success; Contingency scholars reject theoretical coherence in explaining neoliberal policy (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism is a self-consciously evolving thought collective, not a fixed catechism #expands (0.90) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 141
• Neoliberalism lacks a stable meaning or historically specific constituency #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 17
• Neoliberalism is internally plural yet not formless #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 10
• Neoliberalism’s deliberate epistemic inconsistencies enabled its long-term success #corroborates (0.80)
• Neoliberalism’s cohesion comes from thought-collective structure, not explicit doctrine #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 916
• Neoliberalism’s internal plurality is strategic strength, not weakness #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1014
• Contingency scholars reject theoretical coherence in explaining neoliberal policy #expands (0.75)