Elite Power under Advanced Neoliberalism

Davies, Will. 2017. Elite Power under Advanced Neoliberalism. Theory Culture and Society, 34(5-6), pp. 227-250. ISSN 0263-2764 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

The financial crisis, and associated scandals, created a sense of a juridical deficit with regard to the financial sector. Forms of independent judgement within the sector appeared compromised, while judgement over the sector seemed unattainable. Elites, in the classical Millsian sense of those taking tacitly coordinated, ‘big decisions’ over the rest of the public, seem absent. This article argues that the eradication of jurisdictional elites is an effect of neoliberalism, as articulated most coherently by Hayek. It characterises the neoliberal project as an effort to elevate ‘unconscious’ processes over ‘conscious’ ones, which in practice means elevating cybernetic, non-human systems and processes over discursive spheres of politics and judgement. Yet such a system still produces its own types of elite power, which come to consist in acts of translation, rather than judgment. Firstly, there are ‘cyborg intermediaries’: elites which operate largely within the system of codes, data, screens and prices. Secondly, there are ‘diplomatic intermediaries’: elites who come to narrate and justify what markets (and associated technologies and bodies) are ‘saying’. The paper draws on Lazzarato’s work on signifiying vs asignifying semiotics in order to articulate this, and concludes by considering the types of elite crisis which these forms of power tend to produce.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276417715072

Keywords:

elites, neoliberalism, finance, Hayek, capitalism, Lazzarato

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Politics > Political Economy Research Centre

Dates:

DateEvent
10 June 2016Accepted
22 June 2017Published Online
1 September 2017Published

Item ID:

18744

Date Deposited:

15 Jul 2016 11:59

Last Modified:

24 Mar 2021 12:48

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/18744

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