Undoing the Demos - (Near Future) by Wendy Brown (Hardcover)

About the Book

Tracing neoliberalism's devastating erosions of democratic principles, practices, and cultures.

Book Synopsis

Neoliberal rationality -- ubiquitous today in statecraft and the workplace, in jurisprudence, education, and culture -- remakes everything and everyone in the image of homo oeconomicus. What happens when this rationality transposes the constituent elements of democracy into an economic register? In vivid detail, Wendy Brown explains how democracy itself is imperiled.

The demos disintegrates into bits of human capital; concerns with justice cede to the mandates of growth rates, credit ratings, and investment climates; liberty submits to the imperative of human capital appreciation; equality dissolves into market competition; and popular sovereignty grows incoherent. Liberal democratic practices may not survive these transformations. Radical democratic dreams may not either.

In an original and compelling theoretical argument, Brown explains how and why neoliberal reason undoes the political form and political imaginary it falsely promises to secure and reinvigorate. Through meticulous analyses of neoliberalized law, political practices, governance, and education, she charts the new common sense.

Undoing the Demos makes clear that, far from being the lodestar of the twenty-first century, a future for democracy depends upon it becoming an object of struggle and rethinking.

Review Quotes

"A brilliant and incisive book, Undoing the Demos deserves to be widely read."---Astra Taylor, Bookforum

"An impressive work of political theory written by someone who has the rare talent of combining political passion with philosophical rigour."---Christiaan Boonen, Political Studies Review

"Brown's book is theoretical yet accessible... . essential reading not only for academics but for anyone concerned with our collective political future, and with the defense of democratic politics."---Han Rollman, Pop Matters

"Draws important empirical and analytical connections between Foucault's analytical approach to governmentality and a complementary Marxist critique of the material inequality that follows from neoliberal market reforms....[and] shows how such developments are reinforced by widespread acceptance of the concept of human capital."---Foucault Studies, Oscar Larsson

About the Author

A prize-winning examination of why nation-states wall themselves off despite widespread proclamations of global connectedness.