Thanks to Theo Kyriakides (@bio_karneia), who was present at the GDAT debate on neoliberalism [Obsolete link removed. Original url: ../2012-12-05-gdat-neoliberalism-anthropology] for alerting me to a post by Kathleen Fitzpatrick of Pomona College. She writes,
I have come to despise the term “neoliberal,” to the extent that I’d really like to see it stricken from academic vocabularies everywhere. It’s less that I have a problem with the actual critique that the term is meant to levy than with the utterly sloppy and nearly always casually derisive way in which the term is of late being thrown about. 1 “Neoliberal” is hardly ever used these days to point to instances of the elevation of market values above all others — it’s used to tar anything that has anything to do with any market realities whatsoever.
Read the rest here: “Neoliberal” | Planned Obsolescence.
In a later post, she says:
like “bourgeois” or “reactionary” or any number of other such terms, I have too often of late heard “neoliberal” deployed as an insult by people on the left against other people on the left. It’s the classic circular firing squad of ideological purity, and it makes me nuts.