Neo-liberalism and other political imaginaries

Abstract

This article looks at how various political cultures and imaginaries occlude the public’s deeply democratic political role, especially the currently reigning anti-political culture of neo-liberalism. Even in an era when millions of people the world over take to the streets in protest, dominant political imaginaries position most of the world’s people as largely powerless. What is needed is a radical political imaginary along the lines that Cornelius Castoriadis suggests. This imaginary foregrounds the ways in which all social and political formations are already constituted by human beings’ ability to create new formations in the absence of foundations. But ignorant of this power, people are trapped in imaginaries where it seems that power resides elsewhere, only in halls of state or corporate boardrooms. This article offers an account that identifies where power originates and how it can be reclaimed through a more radical democratic political imaginary. The article proceeds as follows: the first two sections discuss varieties of political culture and how, despite seeming natural, they are actually products of underlying political imaginaries. Then I explain the concept of political imaginary and how the current reigning imaginary of neo-liberalism curiously undercuts the practice of politics itself. Under neo-liberalism, market solutions are seen as superior to political ones. Yet now even at the time of this writing, there is a backlash against neo-liberalism: from the right in a search for an older order (which is still anti-political) and from the left for more public power on the streets. While the latter is, in my view, far better than the former, it still does not go far enough in imagining politics and power otherwise. In the final section I draw on Castoriadis to flesh out the idea of a radical political imaginary.