Crisis: Critique, Temporality, and Trauma

Abstract

In this chapter, the author explores the possibility and conditions for resistance to neoliberal governmentality by conceptually unpacking the notion of crisis. After critically analysing the different conceptions of crisis in business and management studies, international relations, and Marxism, this chapter proceeds to examine whether the alignment of critique, the temporality of crisis, and the trauma of socio-political violence can provide sufficient ground for the emergence of resistant subjectivities. Through critical engagement with the theoretical writings of Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, the author uncovers the transgressive and reflective qualities of critique in times of crisis, the suspension of old ways of reasoning that the suddenness of crisis provokes and the trauma that its consequences can inflict.