Too big to fail has the complement too small to protect

Evidence

The way that “too big to fail” has as its complement “too small to protect”: where there are only capitals and competition among them, not only will some win while others lose (inequality and competition unto death replaces equality and commitment to protect life), but some will be rescued and resuscitated, while others will be cast off or left to perish (owners of small farms and small businesses, those with underwater mortgages, indebted and unemployed college graduates). Combined with the relentless attack on publics and what Foucault called “society,” an attack that has dismantled public institutions and political spaces, this alters the principle of “inclusion of all” that Foucault describes in his lectures as a novel feature of neoliberalism. Everyone is still rendered as human capital, but the protections he imagined extended to all have vanished. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 142

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘too big to fail / too small to protect’ pairing is a crisp, citable formulation for an essay on austerity’s selective abandonments.
• SHARE: The epigrammatic ‘too big to fail, too small to protect’ formulation is worth sending to anyone working on austerity politics or financial crisis scholarship.