Undoing The Demos Av Wendy (University Of California Berkeley) Brown

<p>Neoliberal rationality ¿ ubiquitous today in statecraft and the workplace, in jurisprudence, education, and culture ¿ remakes everything and everyone in the image of <i>homo oeconomicus</i>. What happens when this rationality transposes the constituent elements of democracy into an economic register? In vivid detail, Wendy Brown explains how democracy itself is imperiled.<br><br>The demos disintegrates into bits of human capital; concerns with justice cede to the mandates of growth rates, credit ratings, and investment climates; liberty submits to the imperative of human capital appreciation; equality dissolves into market competition; and popular sovereignty grows incoherent. Liberal democratic practices may not survive these transformations. Radical democratic dreams may not either.<br><br>In an original and compelling theoretical argument, Brown explains how and why neoliberal reason undoes the political form and political imaginary it falsely promises to secure and reinvigorate.