Neoliberalism transformed even the criteria for individual self-evaluation

Evidence

Much more than a mood swing, whereby the advocates of freer markets would temporarily prevail over the harbingers of a more protective State, the policies instigated under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and further refined by their “Third Way” successors, have successively transformed everything from corporate management to statecraft, household economics to personal relations. In the world shaped by these transformations — a world where the securitization of risks and liabilities greatly widens the realm of potentially appreciable assets — even the criteria according to which individuals are incited to evaluate themselves no longer match the civic, business, and family values respectively distinctive of political, economic, and cultural liberalism. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 747

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that evaluation criteria themselves no longer match classical liberalism’s distinct spheres is dense — it maps the collapse of the civic/market/family distinctions that liberal theory took as foundational.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberalism transforms the self so that crises stop being read as system failures — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 302; Neoliberalism denies any harmable self, dissolving all positive freedom — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 308; Neoliberalism replaces class analysis with a cynical catechism of limitless self-transformation — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 332 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism swallows humanity through its form of valuation itself #expands (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 75