The production of neoliberal subjectivities: constellations of domination and resistance

The last 50 years have been marked by many remarkable events, historic shifts and technological breakthroughs that have challenged societies and driven change. Over the course of this period a revolution – sometimes quiet, other times violent and vicious – has also taken place. The rich ecology of our economic, political and social systems have become imbricated and enmeshed by a particular outlook; an outlook that has reshaped behaviours and expectations across scales – from the global to the most intimate of spaces. Neoliberalism, whether rolled out through the establishment of institutions to further the project, or rolled back via de-regulatory measures (Peck, 2010), has penetrated the worlds in which we live. There is the roll call of familiar names: economists, beginning with Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman through to leaders who uncompromisingly pushed the ideas, making them ‘fit’ with reality: Augusto Pinochet, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Yet, it is not the macro-level policies and change that this volume is concerned with. It is the absorption of neoliberal thought and the co-constituting processes that have contributed to a common-sense acceptance of neoliberal policies, not just through the subsequent actions of elite interests, but through the interiorisation of neoliberalism into our very beings. Thus, the development, production and reproduction of neoliberal subjectivity is a key point of interest herein. And intertwined with this subjectivity, at the edges of hegemonic processes, lie grey areas of domination and resistance. These constellations allow the exploration of identity in the face of this expansionary neoliberal project. And it is here, at the edges of identity of neoliberal subjectivity, that we situate our study.