Subjects in crisis: Paradoxes of emancipation and alter-neoliberal critique

Abstract

This article examines the formation of political subjectivity in times of neoliberalization and crisis. It does so by following the meaning-making practices of Penelope, a participant of the 2011 Syntagma Square occupation in Athens. The Syntagma Square encampment was at the heart of Greece’s anti-austerity movement. Prior to this experience, Penelope says she ‘wasn’t the most sophisticated person’ politically, yet that she ‘changed’ for the better precisely because of her participation. What does Penelope aspire to and what does she demarcate her self from against the backdrop of austerity neoliberalism, crisis, and her experience in the square? And what remains of her participation experience years on with regard to subjectivity? This article claims that the relationship between subject formation and emancipation under neoliberalism is paradoxical: in her effort to overcome neoliberal rationalities in Greece, Penelope is also unwittingly reproducing them. In disentangling this paradox, this article concludes with a theorization of what I call ‘alter-neoliberal critique’: against and beyond neoliberalism.