The anxieties of neoliberalism

Allen, Patrick (2023). The anxieties of neoliberalism. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

Preview

Allen2023PhD.pdf
Text - Accepted Version
Available under License All rights reserved.
Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

This thesis investigates the relationship between anxieties, Fisherian capitalist realism, and neoliberal ideology. It offers an analysis and critique of how anxieties are inculcated and then medicalised as artefact of capitalism and neoliberal ideology. This thesis achieves two aims: (1) it unpacks the relationships between neoliberal ideology, capitalist realism, its social and material outcomes, and how it relates to anxieties; and (2) it explains how neoliberal ideology and capitalist realism, through its construction of anxieties, reinforces feedback cycles that serve to protect power structures and dominant thematic ideologies associated with neoliberalism. As such, this thesis argues that anxieties serve to force feedback cycles—as either an artefact of capitalist political economy or inculcated through ideological influence—that halt the acceleration past neoliberalism and capitalism as they block transcendence towards a post-capital synthesis. This thesis is written in the discipline of radical political philosophy and psychopolitics as it uses a schizoanalytic theory to elucidate the structures that give rise to anxieties and to propose a way forward for—and how to synthesise—both neoliberal anxiety and capitalist realism. As a result, this thesis offers a unique approach to conceptualising anxieties in the context of political and economic ideologies.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):