Neoliberalism is a governing rationality that frames all life in market terms

Evidence

Neoliberalism, I have argued throughout this book, is best understood not simply as economic policy, but as a governing rationality that disseminates market values and metrics to every sphere of life and construes the human itself exclusively as homo oeconomicus. Neoliberalism thus does not merely privatize — turn over to the market for individual production and consumption — what was formerly publicly supported and valued. Rather, it formulates everything, everywhere, in terms of capital investment and appreciation, including and especially humans themselves. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 357

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definitional claim of the book: neoliberalism as governing rationality rather than economic policy.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics and homo oeconomicus, and to Brown’s broader argument against treating neoliberalism as mere privatization. — connects to: Neoliberalism works best when subjects willingly internalize market logic through everyday micro-interactions; Neoliberalism extends market logic to regulate all human behavior. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 32; Neoliberalism governs people by getting them to self-regulate toward economic ideals. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 38 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism economizes justice, sovereignty, and the rule of law #expands (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 32
• Market rationality is actually imagination dominating at every level #responds-to (0.70) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 156