Satire can reveal everyday neoliberalism by exaggerating life-organizing trends

Evidence

One of the better ways to become aware of everyday neoliberalism is to approach it from a slightly oblique angle. Many works of art have set out to do just that; one of my favorites is Gary Shteyngart’s popular novel Super Sad True Love Story. The overarching narrative line of this vaguely futuristic novel involves the political collapse of the “American Restoration Authority” and a coup by a for-profit security firm, backed by Chinese investors in American government debt. But the author is less fixated upon such macro-level political science fiction than his plausible exaggerations of trends in the organization of everyday life. For instance, urban streets are equipped with “Poles” that give instant LED readouts of your credit ranking as you pass by, accompanied by personalized investment advice; the protagonist works for the Post Human Services Corporation, which provides unspecified rejuvenation services to those of advanced age (that is, over thirty) by means of prostheses. Everyone wears a device called an “apparat,” which continually streams data between people in near proximity, and allow the user to FAC (Form a Community) on the fly by scanning a standardized set of statistics concerning compatibility, income, and history: Streams of data were now fighting for time and space around us. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 259

Categorization

• XREF: The apparat and Poles directly evoke a fully realized version of the surveillance/credit-scoring dystopia — resonates with Degrowth and other critiques of financialized everyday life; also echoes the reader’s knowledge of Zamyatin’s We, whose totalitarian apparatus mirrors this consumer version. — connects to: Neoliberal legitimacy is secured by lifestyle knowhow rather than profit itself — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 755; Neoliberalism works best when subjects willingly internalize market logic through everyday micro-interactions; Corporate anti-capitalist satire reinforces rather than undermines capitalist realism — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 29
• CANDY: A credit-score LED pole that grades you as you walk past is a memorable, tweetable image.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism works best when subjects willingly internalize market logic through everyday micro-interactions #corroborates (0.75)
• Neoliberal legitimacy is secured by lifestyle knowhow rather than profit itself #corroborates (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 755