Knowing Neoliberalism

ABSTRACT

Critical accounts over the past years have focused on neoliberalism as a subject of knowledge; there has been a recently growing interest in neoliberalism as an object of knowledge. This article considers the theoretical, epistemological and political implications of the relationship between neoliberalism as an epistemic subject and neoliberalism as an epistemic object. It argues that the ‘gnossification’ of neoliberalism – framing it an epistemic project, and deriving implications for political engagement from this – avoids engaging with numerous ambiguous elements of the production of knowledge. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘scholastic fallacy’ and Boltanski and Chiapello’s work in sociology of critique, the article lays out a framework for the study of the relationship between epistemic, moral, and political elements of critique of neoliberalism, including the conditions of its own production in contemporary academic contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Academia
• neoliberalism
• sociology of critique
• sociology of intellectuals

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. https://markcarrigan.net/2018/03/09/the-intellectual-adventure-of-slaying-the-neoliberal-beast/.

Additional information

Funding

The writing of this article was in part enabled through a grant from the Cambridge Political Economy Society.

Notes on contributors

Jana Bacevic

Jana Bacevic is a Research Associate at the Faculty of Education and the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD thesis analysed the critique of neoliberalism in UK academia through the lens of sociology of critique. Her work is in the fields of social theory, sociology of knowledge, and politics of knowledge production. Previously, she was Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Aarhus and Lecturer at the Central European University in Budapest.