The neoliberal city as utopia of exclusion

ABSTRACT

This paper critically examines the modern city as an expression of a neoliberal ‘utopia of exclusion’. Beginning by outlining the utopian, exclusionary dimensions of contemporary neoliberalism, it moves on to argue that the modern city embodies the utopia of exclusion as an ‘Evil Paradise’. However, the paper contends even at its most celebratory the ‘Evil Paradise’ evokes the dark side of the Utopia of exclusion: the increasingly absolute separation between the lives of the haves and the have-nots. The paper concludes by asking what potential alternatives exist in contemporary urban practices and asks if the utopia of exclusion itself paradoxically presents opportunities to construct alternative, inclusive forms of community.

KEYWORDS:

• Political theory
• neoliberalism
• utopianism
• urban movements
• urban Inequality

Acknowledgements

Mark Bailey would like to thank Georgia Spiliopoulos, Maria Julia Trombetta, Greg Moore, David Kiwuwa, David O’Brien and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Mark Bailey http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1112-5429

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Bailey

Mark Bailey is Assistant Professor in Politics at the School of International Studies, UNNC. Mark’s research interests revolve around the use of political myth in discourses of globalization; the ‘anti-globalization’ movement (especially the mythologizing of the movement from within); US foreign policy in the post-1945 period, and the political philosophies of Ernst Cassirer, Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin. His doctoral research, which was part-funded by the ESRC, examined the employment of mythological modes of thought in legitimating visions of world order, concentrating specifically on the highly effective use of political myth to justify an aggressively militaristic foreign policy by American ‘neoconservatives’ close to and inside the administration of President George W Bush. His present work involves the utilization of the philosophy of Eric Voegelin to construct a critique of the appropriation and corruption of the philosophy of Leo Strauss by neoconservative intellectuals to continue to justify hawkish US foreign policies, both towards the Middle East and towards rising powers such as China.