Join our online workshop Thursday 29 October at 6pm CET to discuss Owen Worth’s new article!
On zoom, register here: tbd
Speaker
Owen Worth is a Professor and Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Limerick. He teaches and publishes in the wide areas of International Political Economy, Global Politics and has published on class, hegemony, resistance, political movement from both the right and left and on International Relations (IR) and Development theory.
Discussants
tbd
Find the article here: https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/gpe/5/2/article-p220.xml
Abstract
This article overviews the recent material on the crisis of the neoliberal order and suggests that while it has indeed lost its legitimacy, its practices are still very much in use. It suggests that if we are to compare the current historical period to one of the past, it fits more with the contradictions that emerged at the end of the 19th century than with the destruction of the 1930s as has previously been argued by those that use the term ‘interregnum’. However, it suggests that this comparison can only go so far, as the forms of opposition that have emerged to contest and transform the contemporary neoliberal order lack the ideological depth in order for such a transformation. As a result, we have entered a unique era of the ‘politics of farce’ where empty populism has seemingly taken centre stage that is marked by its contradictions and inconsistencies. As such, this article borrows from Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the ‘carnival’ and from Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle to show how performative politics has come to the fore in the current era, leaving more of a sense that the neoliberal order is unravelling and spiralling into the unknown than in its final death throes.
See you there!
