Neo-Liberalism – DEONTOLOGISTICS

Levi has a post up riffing on Dominic’s response to my piece for the Speculative Heresy/Inhumanities crossover event. It revisits a line of thought he’s touched on before, namely, that neo-liberalism is somehow founded upon the formal conception of the subject that emerged out of Kant, a conception which I endorse to some extent.

Dominic’s very insightful point was that neo-liberalism is more than just a false antropology. Although it has at times deployed an egoistic conception of the essence of man, it is no longer dependent upon this conception, which is evident in the fact that neo-liberalism is still dominant, despite the widespread rejection of this egoisitc image. I wholeheartedly agree with this. His other point, which Levi has tried to take up and expand, is that neo-liberalism “also goes to considerable lengths to modify the “soul” of society (its basic normative commitments and symbolic co-ordinates) so that individuals will perceive this to be their true nature and act accordingly.” I start to have reservations here, specifically in relation to the way Levi develops the point.

Continue reading Ideology and Subjectivity

There has recently been an interesting (and somewhat turbulent) discussion regarding Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the Object-Oriented Ontologies (OOO) that are influenced by it, in relation to the kind of politics these theories can support.

There is obviously Nick Srnicek’s very interesting piece from the Militant Dysphoria conference (available here), which tries to show how ANT provides some useful resources for reconsidering the nature of political action, and his recent additional commentary on it (here), which situates this piece in relation to the notion of folk-politics (something I myself have talked about here, but with a slightly different twist).

Then there is the more fiery (though now thankfully cooled) exchange between Reid Kane at Planomenology (here and here) and Levi at Larval Subjects (here, here, here and here) over whether either Latour’s ANT or OOO has neo-liberal political implications. This obviously got out of hand, but it strikes me that the real intuition behind the argument that Reid was making (and that others have also been making), was never made fully explicit. Without wishing to blow on the embers, I feel that it would be helpful for this intuition (as I see it) to be properly formulated. This also gives me an opportunity to work out some other thoughts about Latour’s position which have been haunting me.

The proviso here is that I am neither an expert on Latour or on OOO, although I will admit to having read more of the former than the latter. So, it is possible that my reading, and the implications I draw from it, will be faulty. As ever, I am happy to be corrected. That being said, I will proceed anyway, while the point is fresh in my mind.

Edit: It is of course also important to note that there are different variants of OOO, and not all will endorse or take up the Latourian positions I’m trying to analyze here, at least in the way they are found here.

Continue reading Explanatory Networks and Political Reason