Comments on: Harvey on neoliberal freedom

by: Eric

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:34:55 +0100

The spam blocker on my email is hard(ass) too, as I’m just finding these comments. Yeah, that Brown. I’ve got a few posts on Brown, under the category “Brown” mostly, but Michael has quite a few and with more depth than I do. Check out his site.

by: shag carpet bomb

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:54:32 +0100

i don’t know why, but this post just came up in my feed read as if you just published it. didn’t realize it was a post from 2008! ooops. *bracing for the spam blocker again*

by: shag carpet bomb

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:53:27 +0100

dewd, that spam blocker is haaaaaaaaaaard

by: shag carpet bomb

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:52:47 +0100

oh. brown? as in Wendy Brown? Please let me know which posts to read then. BBL when I finish reading this eric. I’ve been reading your other paper off and on, too.

by: Eric

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:27:20 +0100

Thanks for your comment, Michael. Yeah, Harvey is weak on the more subjective aspects. This isn’t, I don’t think, just an oversight or theoretical choice. It’s a problem with his whole approach: he sees capital as unproblematically imposing its axioms on subjects. Any resistance he sees is secondary. This, actually, is part of what I’m trying to get at with the stratum stuff, which is going to precede this section on Harvey (which I’ve also extensively reworked) and borrows from D&G’s discussion of strata. Not sure how much I can say because I’m still trying to work through it. But I’ll be sure to post whatever I come up with.

Thanks again for your comment. And by the way, I’ve found your posts about neolib, Brown, Lemke, and the like very helpful and illuminating, even though I’m not familiar with the literature you are using. It seems like we are working in much the same mode.

by: michael c

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:24:12 +0100

Hi, thanks for this draft which helps me to get to grips with how Harvey’s approach to neoliberalism differs from the Foucault-based one that Lemke and Wendy Brown build their analyses on. I suppose the main difference is that in the Foucauldian account there is a focus on techniques of the self, which is the area that Harvey’s account seems weak on -as you point to.

I wasn’t sure about what ’substratum’ and ’strata’ were referring to, which might be because I haven’t read Harvey’s book. I know you prefigured that you’d expand on this later but could you explain this some more?