Conference:Connected Histories of Neoliberalism
The LA Hub is an interdisciplinary node for knowledge production, dissemination and exchange, recently created at Goldsmiths, whose aim is to develop and sustain research networks, communication, and collaboration between researchers based in the UK and in Latin America. At the same time, it aims to provide a platform focusing on a trans-regional axis that takes Latin America and the UK as initial poles but is not exhausted by them.
The LA Hub organised a whole day conference “Connected Histories of Neoliberalism”, that took place on the 17th of October, 2016, at Goldsmiths. It was funded by both SLAS and Goldsmiths Graduate School Funds and it was advertised through several websites, Latin American networks and posters.
From our perspective, neoliberalism can be understood in many ways: as economic ideology, biopolitical governance (a technology of government), a governing rationality through which everything is ‘economicized’, an ethos, a quasi-ontological condition (as capitalist realism), even as an aesthetic sensorium… Neoliberalism cannot be reduced to a single unitary phenomenon but at the same time, paradoxically, it appears as a new distinct regime. Therefore, we put together different dimensions and perspectives on the flows, backflows, and undercurrents of neoliberalisation processes in a comparative perspective, thinking about the trans-atlantic connections of the histories signalled by or against neoliberal reason. Even though we wanted to tackle issues that in one way or another deal with the elusive signifier that is Latin America, we aimed to provide an open approach that is not territorially bound to the subcontinent, and broaden the debate on potential connectivities.
The conference was therefore divided into four sections. In the first one “Neoliberalisation as (Political) Economy” professor Jose Mauricio Domingues (Rio de Janeiro State University) described the three stages of capitalism and the production of neoliberalism as a specific form of market regulation -with its ensuing subjective rationalities. Pedro Mendes Lourerio (SOAS) discussed the need to identify actors that make possible the neoliberal state, to have a proper understanding of such values.
The following panel, ‘Memory and Trauma Under Neoliberalism’ with Alicia Salomone (Universidad de Chile) and Edward King (Bristol University) explored the written word and artistic production related with memory. Vikki Bell (Goldsmiths) explored the question of how to think the future, the relationship between memory and technology and the important link between neoliberalism and subjectivity.
In the third panel ‘Neoliberalism and the Coloniality of Power’ Oscar Guardiola Rivera (Birkbeck), Shela Sheikh (Goldsmiths), and Hanna Meszaros Martin (Goldsmiths) discussed the violence involved in the process of naming and knowing plants, networks, and ecosystems. They showed how neoliberalism can also be conceived as politics of soil that inherited colonial legacy on the space and epistemic production. Finally in the last panel, “Intersectionality in Neoliberal times”, Sara Farris explored the way in which some European feminisms play the neoliberal game through the idea of integration of migrant -muslim- women in Europe. Based on providing care work opportunities, integration is therefore produced through hierarchical and racialized modality of care and a specific subjectivity based in this othering.
We believe the conference was a huge success and we really enjoyed it! During the day it was attended by at least 100 people. It was very interesting instance to explore different dimensions in which neoliberalism is put in place by concrete social actors and is expressed in particular forms of sociality, beliefs, subjectivities, and cultural products. At the same time, it was an opportunity for publicly launching the hub providing an overview of the different projects we are carrying out. It was a great opportunity to share with people our project and we received very positive feedback, and people interested in becoming members of the Hub. Since then, our group broadened. The conference signaled a new stage for the hub; the consolidation of our work.
Latin American Hub