Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics

Jodi Dean

Published by Duke University Press 2009

Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies

Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics

Jodi Dean

In the series e-Duke books scholarly collection

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822390923

Overview
Contents

About this book

Argues that the political left has failed to claim its ideological victories and subsequently has enabled a depoliticization of crucially political concerns, such as the economy and capitalism.

Author / Editor information

Jodi Dean is Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She is the author of Žižek’s Politics, Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy, and Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace.

Reviews

“Jodi Dean provides an incredibly lucid explanation of what neoliberalism has been both in policy terms and collective fantasies of the relation of markets to freedom. But the really threatening Big Other in this book is not neoliberal ideology, but the failed and flawed leftist will that concedes too much power and unity to neoliberalism. This is a frank polemic that will stimulate many arguments about the past and future of critical theory and democratic politics in the United States.”—Lauren Berlant, author of The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship

“Jodi Dean’s new book provides what we have all been waiting for: the authentic theoretical analysis of how ideology functions in today’s global capitalism. Her diagnosis of ‘communicative capitalism’ discloses how our ‘really-existing democracies’ curtail prospects of radical emancipatory politics. Dean demonstrates this status of democracy as a political fantasy not through cheap pseudo-Marxist denunciations, but through a detailed examination of social, symbolic, and libidinal mechanisms and practices. To anyone who continues to dwell in illusions about liberal democracy, one should simply say: ‘Hey, didn’t you read Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies?’”—Slavoj Zizek, Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

“In Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Jodi Dean pulls few punches in her critique of the American Left, for both its complacency and its limited capacity to (or even lack of awareness of the need to) offer a stand of political resistance to power. . . . Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies is not, however, merely a critique of the US Left; it is also a powerful demolition of its claims for a collective existence.”

-- David Chandler Radical Philosophy

‘[A] provocative examination of contemporary Left politics. . . . The complex ideas of poststructuralist thinkers such as Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek figure prominently in her analysis. As in her earlier work, however, Dean is able to relate the value of such thinkers in understanding contemporary events with unique lucidity and clarity. . . . [A]n important, worthwhile, and entertaining contribution to discussions of radical alternatives to current political realities. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, and above.”

-- R. W. Glover Choice

“Dean’s [text] is stimulating in its ability to offer an alternative view of how neoliberalism achieved apparent invincibility. The work offers a challenge to leftists to produce not only some new, radical ideas but to unite and be heard once more.”

-- Lucy Welsh Feminist Legal Studies

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
INTRODUCTION Post-Politics and Left Victory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Technology the promises of communicative capitalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2 Free Trade the neoliberal fantasy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
3 Democracy a knot of hope and despair Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
4 Resolve speaking of evil Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
5 Ethics left responsiveness and retreat Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
6 Certainty 9 / 11 conspiracy theories and psychosis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 228

eBook

Published: September 2, 2009
ISBN: 9780822390923