Michel Feher, The Age of Appreciation: Eight Lectures on the Neo-Liberal Condition by Goldsmiths UOL

The Age of Appreciation: Lectures on the Neoliberal Condition

In the last three decades, neoliberalism has defined a brave new capitalist world – a world in which financial markets preside over the allocation of resources. Under neoliberal capitalism, investors are not only allowed to reap an exorbitant rent from the production of others: they are also invested with the power to decide what is worth producing. In addition to siphoning off wealth, financial institutions establish the criteria that shape the business plans of corporations and the budgets of elected governments.

This lecture series purports to show that the rule of investors proves as transformative of personal motivation and conduct as of corporate management and statecraft. I will argue that, just like in the past with other shifts in governing practices, a new representation of human potential and human frailties – a distinctively neoliberal perspective on the human condition – is implicated in the financial turn of capitalism.
Throughout the liberal era, from the age of Adam Smith to the Fordist period, governing agencies assumed that, while driven by the amoral urge to minimize pain and maximize pleasure, people were also endowed with two civilizing dispositions: an instrumental reason that made them capable of turning their potentially conflicting desires into mutually profitable transactions and a yearning for sympathetic recognition that enabled them to turn their selfish impulses into reciprocal solicitude.

By contrast, I shall claim that the subjects who are at once presupposed and targeted by neoliberal institutions are expected to have very different priorities: they are allegedly more eager to enhance their credit than to make a profit, more preoccupied with shoring up their self-esteem than with optimizing their satisfaction, and more inclined to stake their social life on what they share than on what they exchange with others.
Insofar as neoliberal policies have been instrumental in the advent of this neoliberal condition, it would seem that resisting the former is tantamount to rejecting the latter. However, the political purpose of this lectures series is to advocate just the opposite. My contention is that embracing the expectations of neoliberal agencies is what empowers us to challenge their rule.
Just as the labor movement of the industrial era assumed the status of employee in order to confront exploitative employers, I will argue that facing up to investors requires today’s activists to embrace the condition of “investee”. Since investors rule by means of deciding who deserves to be invested in – who is worthy of being an investee – it is only by challenging them on their own turf – the financial markets – and with their own weapons – speculations against what they value – that their hegemony can be checked. Delineating the realm of investee activism and assessing the stakes is thus the final purpose of these lectures.

Contains tracks

• Michel Feher, The Neoliberal Condition and its Predecessors: Redemption, Fulfilment, Appreciation by Goldsmiths UOL
• Michel Feher, Improve Your Credit: What Human Capital Wants by Goldsmiths UOL
• Michel Feher, Part Two: Improve Your Credit: What Human Capital Still Wants by Goldsmiths UOL
• Michel Feher, The Journey to Self-Esteem: How Human Capital Blossoms by Goldsmiths UOL
• Michel Feher, The Long Journey to Self-Esteem: How Human Capital Blossoms by Goldsmiths UOL