Thought Bubble: Neoliberalism and the Politics of Knowledge

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Abstract This essay addresses the issue of neoliberalism and knowledge from two distinct yet related perspectives. The first part argues that the continuation of neoliberal policies after the crash of 2008 is not an epistemological problem or a matter of false consciousness but an ontological problem. Using the work of Martin Heidegger the essay proposes the reason we might continue with a system shown to be fatally flawed is because awareness of the flaw produces an experience of such anxiety that rather than face the issue head on and create an alternate world we find greater 'security' in the attempt to rebuild the one that is broken. Secondly, neoliberalism has become increasingly dogmatic and is currently the only theory permissible. To this end the institution most closely tied to the production and distribution of knowledge, the university, has to be brought into the group-think that supports both plutocracy and oligarchy at the expense of democracy. Currently the only social institution questioning the truth of neoliberalism the university is increasingly being disciplined by customer service, internal competition and privatization in order to ensure conformity to market credo. The essay then closes by readdressing the importance of the university as a democratic counter to such dogma. It argues that the humanities in particular has always been a site for the contest of worldviews and theories of the human condition and facilitates an exposure to different ways of being-in-the-world that is essential if we are to challenge the systemic closure currently taking place.Keywords neoliberalism, knowledge, capitalism, idiotism, Heidegger, hermeneutics, university, dogmaOn 22 July 2009 economists Tim Besley and Peter Hennessy wrote a letter on behalf of the British Academy to the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, attempting to answer her question as to why no one saw the 2008 financial crisis coming. Their conclusion that this failure was the result of a systemic lack of oversight 'combined with the psychology of herding and the mantra of financial and policy gurus' is highly revealing, as it counters many of the key tenets of the dogma that brought about the crash. Their conclusions are interesting because the reference to psychology raises the spectre of the 'animal spirits' that Keynes1 gave as a reason why markets could not be considered rational and ought not be left to regulate themselves. At the time Keynes was writing, because such an understanding of the human condition merited state intervention and a central role for public works, free-marketeers were required to strenuously and vigorously re-state their case by arguing that such spirits were merely the effect of a market that was not yet free enough.A similar refrain can be heard today. In keeping with all fundamentalisms neoliberals today insist that there was nothing wrong with what free-marketeers believed in; what were perceived to be problems with unregulated markets were in fact caused by the non-believers whose lack of faith prevented the full flowering of freedom and this alone explained the failure. Such advocates are often in thrall to the dystopian stories of Friedrich Hayek or the pseudo-science of Milton Friedman, if not the corporate porn of Ayn Rand, and believe it their duty to reach out to the invisible hand offered them by the prophet Adam Smith. Only this will guarantee the deliverance of humankind to the paradise which Friedman called the 'free private enterprise exchange economy'.2 Thus when the letter refers to 'gurus' we may infer that Besley and Hennessy were speaking about the financial priesthood that turned the entire global economy into a delusional cult that even in crisis continues to maintain its claims to truth. It should also be noted that the persistence of this particular brand of dogmatic thinking - the infallibility of markets and their extension through deregulation and privatisation - suggests that nothing has been learnt from the revelation that what economists believed they knew about the functioning of markets was entirely spurious. …