Spectrology of Authoritarian Neoliberalism

In the face of the global rise of authoritarian phenomena – from Trump in the United States to Macri and Milei in Argentina, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Modi in India, and Erdoðan in Turkey, and the increasing traction of Vox in Spain and the AfD in Germany – Gisela Catanzaro argues for the continued relevance of the concept of ideology for understanding contemporary social processes and political struggles. Catanzaro places particular emphasis on the transformations of neoliberalism and its authoritarian traits, from its origins in Latin America, where it was forced onto societies through bloody coups during the 1970s, through a second phase, linked to globalization, that spread to many parts of the world in the late 1990s, and a more recent phase that has gained prominence since 9/11 and especially since the 2008 financial crisis. In this later phase, the authoritarian spirit of neoliberalism has again come to the forefront, but this time in the midst of formal democracies. Using Argentina as a paradigmatic case but ranging more widely, Catanzaro shows that the authoritarian neoliberalism of the present is driven by, and at the same time exacerbates, an elitist, punitive, sacrificial, anti-egalitarian, and anti-intellectual ideology that has left its traces in subjectivity and social processes. By providing a rigorous exploration of the logic of authoritarian neoliberalism, this book makes a major contribution to understanding an ideology that is increasingly shaping our social and political world.

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