Neoliberalism & Hypocrisy

     This week’s readings left me with more emotions, questions, confusion, and certainties than any week prior. Lisa Duggan’s short yet intricate investigation of neoliberalism in The Twilight of Equality? finally placed a valid label on the political frustration I have had for years; true to the duality and hypocrisy of neoliberalism itself, the text was both deeply personal and distant/intimidating. It was personal in that I resonated strongly with her critique of upward redistribution (also know as elitism/wealth distribution/capitalism?) and distant/intimidating in that I felt already defeated at the thought of trying to challenge/change/reshape something so much larger and more powerful than myself.

            “Opposition to material inequality is maligned as ‘class warfare,’ while race, gender, or sexual inequalities are dismissed as merely cultural, private, or trivial” (xiv). This quote from Duggan’s powerful introduction reminded me of a night at a Swims family gathering. Reading carefully, I had the frightful thought that I am more closely associated with neoliberalist ideology than I had previously thought. My staunchly conservative family comes from a religious background, and I had only ever labeled them as Republicans. However, as Duggan convincingly illustrates, it is certainly not that simple. I cannot count the number of times my grandfather has alluded to the idea that if anyone wants to succeed in life, they just need to simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps and “sweat to the brow.” According to most of my relatives, anyone who is left wanting is viewed as lazy, undeserving, not working hard enough, etc. In a nutshell, their economic success is a private matter not to be aided nor inhibited by the government; in this manner, they can take personal responsibility of their lives. Thus, these achievements can transcend any barriers that may exist due to race, gender, sexuality, and a multitude of other identity categories.

            Within a neoliberalist framework, this assumption of transcendence is a result of the refusal to recognize that identity politics cannot be separated from economics and materiality. Neoliberalism, then, is inherently sexist, racist, and elitist because it assumes that these identities are not a significant informer of citizens’ realities. This is what fascinates me most about the ideology because it masks it so well; at just a glance, neoliberalism might even seem progressive due to its favoring of multiculturalism. Upon further inspection, though, you can see that this is just another way to deny the significance of identity politics in favor of a watered-down, difficult to distinguish group of people. In this deliberately confusing manner, the hypocrisy of neoliberalism becomes lost in the mix; government intervention is “good” for private bailouts while “bad” for public welfare and academic discussions of sex are simultaneously too personal/private and too political for public forums. Within this realm of confusion and disregard for important identity categories, individuals have been reconfigured solely as consumers. Duggan’s argument about what this means for public life was clear, concise, and accurate: “…many [people] began to see themselves as consumers of government, expecting the best return for the price paid in taxes, rather than as citizens supporting an expansive array of broadly accessible public agencies and institutions” (38). What happens when we expect a personalized, measurable return from our investment in the government while simultaneously condemning welfare recipients for the exact same thing? More hypocrisy, more entitlement, more ignorance… (Side note: Is Rave Symone a neoliberalist??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXAho8vlmAI)

            Another contradictory neoliberalist ideology is the notion that education is one’s personal responsibility (42). Mohanty addresses the links between neoliberalism and higher education this in her chapter “Privatized Citizenship, Corporate Academies, and Feminist Projects” when she discusses the second revolution of universities that is defined by the ownership, marketability, and economic value of research findings (173). This situating of knowledge within the framework of capitalism and open markets reinforces the notion that anything and everything is subject to commodification and profitization; however, this democratic ideal is not producing democratic citizens, but repressing them (Mohanty 174). As a result, universities are becoming not sites of free academic inquiry, but sites of policed content by the power elite, as evidenced by the SUNY conference “scandal” in Duggan’s second chapter. Thus, since education is heading, if not already completely submerged in, the neoliberalist agenda of privatization and personal responsibility, can we truly continue to claim the creation of true democratic citizens?