A political economy of the senses: Neoliberalism, reification, critique

Abstract

Anita Chari revives the key concept of reification from Marx and the Frankfurt School to spotlight the resistance to neoliberal capitalism now forming at the level of political economy and the more sensate, experiential level of subjective transformation. Reading art by Oliver Ressler, Zanny Begg, Claire Fontaine, Jason Lazarus, and Mika Rottenberg, as well as the politics of Occupy Wall Street, Chari identifies practices through which artists and activists have challenged neoliberalism's social and political logics. By positioning the subject in uncomfortable or impossible locations of desire, practical orientation, and observation, such practices expose neoliberal capitalism's inherent tensions and contradictions. Neoliberal symptoms : the impasse between economics and politics in contemporary political theory -- Neoliberalism and normative ambivalence : third-generation critical theory and the fetish of intersubjectivity -- Alienation and depoliticization : rejoining radical democracy with the critique of capitalism -- Lukács's turn to a political economy of the senses -- The reversibility of reification : adorno from the aesthetic to the social -- Defetishizing fetishes : art and the critique of capital in neoliberal society -- Occupy wall street : challenging neoliberal reification.