A Razao Neoliberal. Economias Barrocas e Pragmatica Popular

Radical Américas

by Verónica Gago

A partir do estudo das dinâmicas inerentes à economia informal e aos bairros periféricos de Buenos Aires, com marcante presença de migrantes bolivianos, a pensadora argentina Verónica Gago debate neste livro o enraizamento do neoliberalismo nas subjetividades populares e sua persistência na América Latina.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Verónica Gago is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, Professor at the Instituto de Altos Estudios, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, and Assistant Researcher at the National Council of Research (CONICET). Her work is deeply influenced by active participation in the experience of Colectivo Situaciones.

Reviews

[Athena]

I only read about 25 percent of this book, including the introduction, conclusion, and first and last chapter. It's provocative because Gago takes the very popular Foucauldian idea of neoliberalism, which is based in governmentality, and asks: What if the spaces and practices that we have been understanding as responses to neoliberalism, as ways of managing and resisting governmentality, are actually ways of generating neoliberalism "from below"? Gago looks at concrete ways of being and doing around La Salada market on the periphery of Buenos Aires to think through how informal practices might be considered as preceding and giving rise to new formal structures, rather than as ways of making do in the absence of state care. She frames this in terms of Spinoza's conatus, as a vitalist striving for self-maintenance. I got lost here since I haven't read Spinoza, and it isn't clear from the sections that I read how this vitalism is ultimately vital -- as in life enhancing.

There are also some arguments about the neodevelopmentalism and extractivism of the supposedly anti-neoliberal, anti-extractive administrations in South America from 2000 onward. I'll probably return to this book because it seems to add an important dimension to neoliberal vs. anti-neoliberal takes on Latin American politics and resistance in 2019.

[R · Rating 5 out of 5]

"From below, neoliberalism is the proliferation of forms of life that reorganize notions of freedom, calculation, and obedience, projecting a new collective affectivity and rationality." (p 6)

The theory is as expected, the data is rich, the story is well told.

[Kyle Keckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Understand neoliberalism and you understand the root of everything which happens today.