Transcendence, fantasy and desire: the affective infrastructures of neoliberalism

我的研究批判性地与新自由主义的当代话语，一个社会经济学说与政治家，如玛格丽特撒切尔和罗纳德里根，并与弗里德里希哈耶克和米尔顿弗里德曼经济学家。一般来说，新自由主义的特点是相信市场的首要地位，竞争的好处，对政府干预的限制和个人经济自由。对新自由主义思想家来说，市场可以解决所有的社会问题。例如，新自由主义者认为，气候灾难可以通过碳交易市场来避免，碳交易市场可以激励跨国公司的生态行为。在批评者看来，新自由主义加剧并扩大了全球不平等、剥夺和贫困。过去15年的全球危机--从2008年金融危机、2016年英国退欧公投、唐纳德·特朗普当选总统到当前的新冠肺炎疫情--都伴随着新自由主义的终结。在这些危机中，即使是最致力于不干预主义的政府也偏离了新自由主义的命令，暂停了市场的首要地位。然而，科林·克劳奇（Colin Crouch）令人回味地称之为“新自由主义奇怪的不死”（2011），我们对此感到惊讶。为了理解新自由主义的持久性，我们需要了解新自由主义意识形态是如何嵌入到制度、博物馆和日常生活中的。我的项目认为，为了解释新自由主义的长寿，我们必须了解它的情感维度、精神力量和具体效果。我们需要理解这些想法如何塑造我们的欲望和我们共同生活的方式;它们如何让人感到有吸引力、令人兴奋或有吸引力，同时又通过排斥、暴力和处置机制运作。我的批判政治经济学方法补充了现有的关于经济秩序（Beckert，2016）和经济秩序经验（Dardot和拉瓦尔，2010）的社会学著作，并从精神分析理论中获得了见解。我研究新自由主义不仅作为一种经济学说，而且作为一种情感基础设施，动员自我实现，自我控制和自我超越的幻想。我的项目有三个分支。首先，它补充了现有的新自由主义思想的奖学金（Mirowski和Plehwe，2009）通过重新解释新自由主义理论的经典文本（哈耶克2011 a; 2011 b; 2013;贝克尔1976）通过精神分析的理论框架。第二，我对新自由主义经济理论中的比喻（比如将冒险作为自我实现的想法）如何在流行文化中投资和转化感兴趣;我将发表我对两位接近新自由主义运动的企业家的研究，彼得·蒂尔和埃隆·马斯克。最后，该项目还将通过更广泛的分析范围来扩展我的论文中提出的主张，该分析纳入了新的来源，突出了经济学今天是如何实践和想象的，特别是最近的流行经济学畅销书（如Freakonomics系列）和金融工具的话语表示（如VIX，一个波动率指数，被称为“恐惧指数”）。该项目的总体目标是使这些话语作品非自然化，从而使其重新政治化，从而实际上为左翼新的替代性理论的阐述做出贡献。它将通过在主要期刊上发表三篇同行评议的文章，以及在东安格利亚大学组织一次会议，在学术界传播我的研究来实现这一目标。为了接触非学术受众，我将与政治经济研究中心一起开发关于经济学的博客和播客系列。我还将与智库共同财富合作，在2023年世界转型节上组织一个关于新自由主义呼吁空间私有化的利益相关者研讨会。

My research critically engages with contemporary discourses of neoliberalism, a socio-economic doctrine associated with politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and with economists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. In general, neoliberalism is characterised by its belief in the primacy of markets, in the benefits of competition, in constraints on governmental intervention and in individual economic freedom. For neoliberal thinkers the market can solve all social problems. For example, neoliberals argue that climate catastrophe can be averted through carbon trading markets that incentivise ecological behaviour for multinational corporations. For its critics, neoliberalism has entrenched and extended global inequality, dispossession and poverty.The global crises of the last fifteen years - from the 2008 financial crash, the 2016 Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump to the current COVID-19 pandemic - have been accompanied by proclamations about the end of neoliberalism. During these crises, even the governments most committed to non-interventionism have deviated from neoliberal diktat and suspended the primacy of the market. However, we keep being surprised by what Colin Crouch evocatively calls "the strange non-death of neoliberalism" (2011). To understand neoliberalism's persistence, we need to understand how neoliberal ideologies are embedded in institutions, imaginaries and everyday lives.My project argues that to explain neoliberalism's longevity, we must understand its affective dimensions, psychic powers and embodied effects. We need to grasp how these ideas shape our desires and our ways of living together; how they may feel attractive, exciting or appealing while at the same time operating through mechanisms of exclusion, violence and disposession. My critical political economy approach complements existing sociological works on economic imaginaries (Beckert, 2016) and on the experience of economic orders (Dardot and Laval, 2010) with insights from psychoanalytical theory. I examine neoliberalism not just as an economic doctrine, but also as an affective infrastructure that mobilises fantasies of self-realisation, self-control, and self-transcendence. My project has three branches. First, it complements the existing scholarship on neoliberal thought (Mirowski and Plehwe, 2009) by reinterpreting canonical texts of neoliberal theory (Hayek 2011a; 2011b; 2013; Becker 1976) through a psychoanalytically-informed theoretical framework. Second, I am interested in how tropes found in neoliberal economic theory (like the idea of risk-taking as self-realisation) are invested and transformed in popular culture; I will publish my research on two entrepreneurs close to the neoliberal movement, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Lastly, the project will also extend the claims made in my thesis via a broader scope of analysis that incorporates new sources that highlight how economics is practiced and imagined today, specifically recent pop-economics bestsellers (like the Freakonomics series) and discursive representations of financial instruments (like the VIX, a volatility index popularised as the 'fear index'). The overall aim of the project is to denaturalise so as to re-politicise these discursive productions, and thereby to practically contribute to the elaboration of new alternative imaginaries on the left.It will do so by disseminating my research in academic circles via the publication of three peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, as well as the organisation of a conference at the University of East Anglia. To reach non-academic audiences, I will develop blogpost and podcast series about economic imaginaries with the Political Economy Research Centre. I will also organise a stakeholder workshop about neoliberal calls for the privatisation of space at the World Transformed 2023 Festival in partnership with the think-tank Common Wealth.