Neoliberalism and its Discontents: The Ideal of Liberation in the Context of Dialectical Tensions and Planetary Extremification
Abstract
This paper offers a critical analysis of the conceptual origins of neoliberal society and its attendant social problems by outlining how traditional concepts founded in Western philosophical liberalism have become intensified in the neoliberal present in a manner that perpetuates domination against the original intention of liberal ideals of emancipation. In particular the paper examines five sites of conceptual distortion that perpetuate domination as follows: From the sovereign individual to possessive individualism; The economic conception of freedom and corporate capitalist empire; The liberal rule of law or the neoliberal unruliness of law; Liberal democracy and its competing identities; The incomplete liberal promise of female emancipation and the neoliberal perpetuation of the patriarchal order of domination.
Copyright (c) 2023 Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Articles are published in Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research under the Creative Commons "Attribution/Non-Commercial/No Derivative Works" Canada licence.
The copyright for the articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles may be used, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial, not-for-profit settings. The submission of a manuscript to Alternate Routes will be taken to mean that the author understands and agrees to the following:
- the manuscript represents original work not previously published;
- the manuscript is not being considered elsewhere for publication in the same language (publication elsewhere in an alternate language does not preclude acceptance of submission to Alternate Routes);
- appropriate written copyright permissions have been secured for republication of any copyrighted material contained in the manuscript;
- copyright for this article is retained by the author, with first publication rights granted to Alternate Routes;
- by virtue of its appearance in this open access journal, it is understood that the article is freely available for use, with proper attribution, for educational and other non-commercial purposes;
- reuse of the article for commercial purposes by anyone other than the author requires permission of the author;
- the author agrees to cite Alternate Routes as a source whenever h/she later republishes or reuses the article in other platforms.
