Abstract
Critical legal scholarship has recently turned to consider the form, mode and role of law in neoliberal governance. A central theme guiding much of this literature is the importance of understanding neoliberalism as not only a political or economic phenomenon, but also an inherently juridical one. This article builds on these conceptualisations of neoliberalism in turning to explore the wider historical, cultural and sociological contexts which inform the production of neoliberal authority. The papers in this collection were first presented at the symposium ‘Forms of authority beyond the neoliberal state’, held at the Griffith Law School in December 2017. They consider the role of the corporation, the site of the university, the politics of debt, the genre of prestige television, and the archic sources of state violence, in order to imagine forms of authority which lie beyond neoliberalism as an ideology and a set of practices, and the ensemble of institutions which constitute the neoliberal state. The contributions draw on social theory, philosophy, cultural studies, legal geography and political theology in exploring new possibilities for cultivating judgement through and beyond the sovereign, political and aesthetic terrains of neoliberal governance.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agamben, Giorgio. 2007. Profanations, trans. Jeff Fort. New York: Zone Books
Agamben, Giorgio. 2011. The kingdom and the glory: For a theological genealogy of economy and government. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2016. Capitalism as religion. In Agamben and radical politics, ed. Daniel McLoughlin, 15–26. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Barkan, Joshua. 2013. Corporate sovereignty: Law and government under capitalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Barnett, Clive. 2010. Publics and markets: What’s wrong with neoliberalism? In The Sage Handbook of social geographies, ed. Susan Smith, et al., 269–296. London: Sage.
Boltanski, Luc, and Eve Chiapello. 2005. The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998. Acts of resistance: Against the tyranny of the market. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brabazon, Honor. 2017a. Introduction: Understanding neoliberal legality. In Neoliberal legality: Understanding the role of law in the neoliberal project, 1–21. London: Routledge.
Brabazon, Honor (ed.). 2017b. Neoliberal legality: Understanding the role of law in the neoliberal project. London: Routledge.
Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. New York: Zone Books.
Cahill, Damien. 2014. The end of laissez-faire? On the durability of embedded neoliberalism. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Dardot, Pierre, and Christian Laval. 2014. The new way of the world: On neoliberal society. London: Verso.
Davies, William. 2014. The limits of neoliberalism: Authority, sovereignty and the logic of competition. London: Sage.
Duménil, Gérard, and Dominique Lévy. 2004. Capital resurgent: The roots of the neoliberal revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 2008. The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gilbert, Jeremy. 2013. What kind of thing is ‘neoliberalism’? New Formations 80(81): 7–22.
Golder, Ben, and Daniel McLoughlin (eds.). 2018. The politics of legality in a neoliberal age. London: Routledge.
Harvey, David. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Honig, Bonnie. 2013. The politics of public things: Neoliberalism and the routine of privatization. NoFo 10: 59–76.
Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2012. The making of the indebted man: An essay on the neoliberal condition, trans. Joshua David Jordan, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2015. Governing by debt, trans. Joshua David Jordan. South Pasadena: Semiotext(e).
Mbembe, Achille. 2016. Decolonizing the university: New directions. Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 15(1): 29–45.
Miller, Bruce. (Showrunner). 2017. The handmaid’s tale (film version). Hulu.
Mirowski, Philip. 2009. Postscript: Defining neoliberalism. In The road from Mont Pèlerin: The making of the neoliberal thought collective, eds. Philip Mirowski, and Dieter Plehwe, 417-456. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Passavant Paul. 2005. The strong neo-liberal state: Crime, consumption, governance, Theory and Event 8(3): https://muse-jhu-edu.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/article/187839.
Peck, Jamie. 2001. Workfare states. New York: Guilford Press.
Peck, Jamie. 2010. Constructions of neoliberal reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Peck, Jamie, and Adam Tickell. 2002. Neoliberalizing space. Antipode 34(3): 380–404.
Plant, Raymond. 2010. The neo-liberal state. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Poulantzas, Nicos. 2000. State, power, socialism. London: Verso.
Rose, Nikolas. 1996. The death of the social? Refiguring the territory of government. Economy and Society 25: 327–356.
Rose, Nikolas, Pat O’Malley, and Mariana Valverde. 2006. Governmentality. Annual Review of Law Society 2: 83–104.
Springer, Simon, Kean Birch, and Julie MacLeavy (eds.). 2016. The handbook of neoliberalism. London: Routledge.
Acknowledgements
As editors of this special issue, we would like to express our appreciation to all the participants at the symposium on ‘Forms of Authority Beyond the Neoliberal State’ held at the Griffith Law School in December 2017, including Edwin Bikundo, Angela Daly, James Martel, Daniel Matthews, Connal Parsley, Timothy Peters, Daniel McLoughlin and Karin van Marle. We would like to acknowledge the Law Futures Centre at Griffith University for the financial support which made this event possible. Many thanks are also due to the editorial team at Law and Critique, particularly Moniza Rizzini Ansari and Valerie Kelley.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Butler, C., Crawley, K. Forms of Authority Beyond the Neoliberal State: Sovereignty, Politics and Aesthetics. Law Critique 29, 265–270 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-018-9230-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-018-9230-2