Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo
GEOFF MANN Article first published online: 23 JAN 2012
GEOFF MANN Article first published online: 23 JAN 2012
"Antipode" Volume 44, Issue 1, pages 265–269, January 2012
There was a stage quite recently—from which, thankfully, we seem to have moved on—when neoliberalism was critical geography's evil deus ex machina, a vicious, shape-shifting capitalist conspiracy that explained everything, yet seemed to require little explanation itself. A proliferation of more precise analyses is now underway, and while we remain far from a consensus “definition”, we are closer to a situation in which we can invoke “neoliberalism” with some conceptual clarity, or at least with some idea of the terrain we might cover.
Paradoxically, the same cannot be said for what is for all intents and purposes the majority shareholder in the idea of neoliberalism: liberalism. Indeed, I would wager that if you compelled a group of contemporary “critical” scholars to take a test, in which they must provide a definition of either liberalism or neoliberalism, the vast majority would choose the latter. (I’d make the same bet on structuralism and post-structuralism.) Now, one might explain this choice by arguing that in this case, “neo-” is not just a chronological filing code: there are qualitatively different dynamics at play today that are obscured by the bland historicism of the term “neoliberalism”, which seems to suggest that in the homogeneous flow of time, our liberalism is merely a “new” variation on an old theme. Whatever merit such a defense might enjoy, however, cannot disguise the fact that many (or perhaps most) of us have a conception of liberalism that is, as they say, a mile wide and an inch deep...
1 commento:
Pam Nogales and I, members of the Platypus Affiliated Society, recently interviewed the Italian Hegelian-Marxist philosopher and historian Domenico Losurdo, author of Liberalism: A Counter-History (2006, translated 2011). We talked about Marxism, the problematic legacy of liberalism, and the State. You might be interested in checking out "Liberalism and Marx: An interview with Domenico Losurdo" at http://platypus1917.org/2012/05/01/liberalism-and-marx-domenico-losurdo/ , the edited transcript of our conversation, which was recently published in The Platypus Review.
You can also find full video of the interview on our Vimeo page: http://vimeo.com/38923840
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