SPECIAL COLLECTION:
THE ETHICS OF DISCONNECTION IN A NEOLIBERAL AGE
Introduction Ilana Gershon Indiana University & Allison Alexy The University of Virginia
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cholars with Foucault in their arsenal have long understood how neoliberalism is more than simply political and economic policies that advocate universalizing market principles partially through deregulation and privatization. They realize that neoliberal policies also presuppose neoliberal selves—selves that consciously and reflexively see themselves as balancing alliances, responsibility, and risk through a mean-ends calculus (see Brown 2006, Cruikshank 1999, Harvey 2005, Rose 1990). David Harvey (2005:42), among others, argues that shifts from liberal economic policies to neoliberal policies are necessarily accompanied by relatively successful efforts to promote new conceptions of what it means to be an individual and an agent. This literature has largely focused on how selves are now expected to discipline themselves according to neoliberal logics and, in particular, how people should take themselves to be a bundle of skill sets which navigate responsibility and risk in a world that putatively operates always by market principles (Cruikshank 1999; Freeman 2007; Maurer 1999; O’Malley 1996; Rankin 2001; Rose 1990, 1996; Urciuoli 2008). The self is not only a bundle of skills from this perspective, the neoliberal self is also a bundle of alliances with an underlying goal of multiplying skills and alliances as much as possible. Yet the current moment has revealed precisely how unrealistic this vision of the self is—out of necessity, alliances must be cut as well as nurtured. The global economic crisis has required new interest not just in how neoliberal rhetorics are
Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 84, No. 4, p. 799–808, ISSN 0003-5491. © 2011 by the Institute for Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of the George Washington University. All rights reserved.
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used to discipline selves, corporations, and nation-states, but also the ways in which neoliberalism shapes disconnection. In this special issue, we focus on this less explored area in which neoliberal perspectives are re-imagining the self—how the neoliberal self is expected to manage alliances as they end. Rather than taking neoliberalism as a known or hegemonic condition, the authors of this volume use moments of disconnection to explore the ways in which neoliberal beliefs are constructed, embodied, and challenged. We analyze instances in which networks are cut or alliances are terminated, taking these moments to be ethnographically fruitful sites for illuminating the weaknesses or insufficiencies in neoliberal approaches to the social. We address the following question ethnographically: how does the labor of disconnection become a moral concern in neoliberal contexts? When analyzing the neoliberal self and its alliances, the authors presuppose that the neoliberal self re-figures core attributes of previous incarnations of capitalist selves, and in particular, the classic liberal capitalist self. We argue that the possessive individualism that Macpherson (1962) suggests is at the heart of the liberal capitalist self has changed its core metaphors. If the liberal capitalist self owns itself as though the self was property, the neoliberal self owns itself as though the self was a business. Under the liberal capitalist perspective, to say that the self owns itself as property means that a person controls his or her body and capacities as objects that can be brought to the marketplace. As a corollary, social relationships can be understood through the lens of property as well— people’s relationships are based on how people’s capacities are traded or given to others. Under liberal capitalism, the idealized social contract ensures that individuals give up some of their autonomy in exchange for some security, economic or otherwise. By contrast, to say that the neoliberal self owns itself as a business means that the neoliberal self is a conglomeration of skills and traits that can be brought into alliance with other conglomerations, but is not rented or leased. These alliances are relationships between two or more neoliberal collectives which unite, constantly aware that they must distribute responsibility and risk in such a manner that each participant can maintain their own autonomy as market actors. In addition, a neoliberal perspective demands that all relations be constructed as though composed of similar entities operating according to similar principles, ignoring levels of scale and 800
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differences in social organization. Each relationship is an alliance modeled after idealized notions of business partnerships. Some of these alliances emerge out of supposedly shared collective traits and others are based on goals perceived as mutually satisfying. The dominant concern in managing such relationships is whether risk and responsibility are appropriately distributed among all of the parties involved (O’Malley 1996, Maurer 1999). Neoliberal agents must take care to minimize the risk and “misallocated” responsibility that these partnerships can potentially create. When all social relationships are defined in terms of market alliances, neoliberal actors are faced with a practical quandary: how best to regulate these alliances effectively. Neoliberal actors cannot necessarily be expected to regulate themselves well in this context. They cannot be expected to act on their own self-interest as well as on the best interest of the alliance, especially since these often do not coincide. Thus from a neoliberal perspective, alliances require external forms of regulation such as law or moral norms. After all, self-interested actors are not necessarily going to make decisions that contribute to a larger social good without some kind of intervention. This is one of the consequences of competition—functioning markets will only emerge when law or government continually regulate this competition (Burchell 1996, Lemke 2001). Jean and John Comaroff (2001, 2010) have pointed out that this neoliberal reliance on law as the preferred technology of regulation has led to the astonishingly rapid proliferation of this field. Yet not all social interactions are appropriate moments for law to intervene. Indeed, all of the ethnographic moments of disconnection discussed in these articles are moments when law might intervene, but is not called upon. In these instances, law is certainly not the first form of regulation people turn towards. Yet market rationality on its own does not offer enough moral sanctions to adequately guide people’s social relations. One cannot live by neoliberal principles alone. Wendy Brown (2006) has pointed out that neoliberalism’s moral inadequacies have contributed to making possible political alliances between neoliberals and neoconservatives. These alliances might seem unlikely on the surface1 since, as Brown explains, it is between “a market political rationality and a moral-political rationality, with a business model of the state in one case and a theological model of the state in the other” (2006:698). Yet it is precisely the contours of neoliberalism’s moral paucity that has allowed people wielding these apparently antithetical political 801
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rationalities to come together to share power. However, neoliberalism and neoconversativism have not become happy partners in every context, leading to the ethnographic question underpinning this special issue: how do people respond to neoliberalism’s moral paucity, particularly in situations when ethics are precisely what is at stake, such as moments of cutting an alliance? The authors of this special section understand moments of disconnection to be challenging the limits of neoliberal ethics (see Kingfisher and Maskovsky 2008). Describing disconnection as a condition that people labor to achieve, not an entropic and inevitable end, contributors analyze moments of disconnection to complicate ethnographic representations of neoliberalism. We argue that efforts to achieve disconnection often take place simultaneously with efforts to connect, that these are mutually constitutive activities. Such dynamics are never innocent of power. Thus, a central concern shared by these authors is how the concept of disconnection is put to use in social life in ways that serve to re-inscribe inequalities. In this discussion, we are building on prior anthropological attention to disconnection, endings, and ruptures as vital topics for ethnographic analysis (Simpson 1998, Carsten 2000, Kelsky 2001, Shohat 2003, Kaneff 2002, Wardle 2002, Tsing 2004). We are mindful of Marilyn Strathern’s (1996) cautions in “Cutting the Network,” in which she describes the variety of pitfalls scholars face when turning to disconnection as a theoretical concern—pitfalls, she points out, that social analysts on the ground often manage to sidestep. She discusses how scholars have often turned to the concept of boundaries to address disconnections as symptoms of divisions that they view as existing prior to their own analysis, such as race or gender. Boundaries in these analyses can be scale-less, a form of division which can move rapidly between self-other relations to established divisions between groups without changing substantively what it means to be a boundary. This is but one of many reasons that Strathern writes: “…the concept of boundary is one of the least subtle in the social science repertoire” (1996:520). Partially in response to the clumsiness of boundaries as an analytical tool, some scholars have turned to hybrids and networks. Yet, as Strathern argues, hybrids and networks as theoretical categories do not always require that ethnographers foreground what people who think of themselves as part of a network (or relational) know, namely that all networks or hybrids bring with them the pragmatic dilemmas of how to disconnect. For scholars, it is possible to think of 802
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networks as growing and extending infinitely; yet, this becomes impossible for those on the ground who are constantly faced with foregrounding certain relationships, while ensuring that others remain in the background. Strathern (1996) points out that when one practices networks, one is constantly faced with disconnecting both as a process and as labor—disconnecting never just happens. Actor-network theorists serve as Strathern’s concrete example, since they are able to overlook this labor in part because, for them, networks become “the way one can link or enumerate disparate entities without making any assumptions about level or hierarchy” (1996:522). Strathern proceeds to illustrate through various ethnographic examples that people on the ground cannot proceed to act without making assertions about level or hierarchy. In short, Strathern argues that paying careful ethnographic attention to how people labor to disconnect can render analytical concepts such as boundaries, hybrids, and networks far more rigorous. This special section aims to bring together conversations which have up until now been largely occurring separately with different anthropological foci, such as the anthropology of work, economic anthropology, the anthropology of death, the anthropology of kinship, the anthropology of disaster, and the anthropology of media. Scholars with these foci have all paid attention to how people in the various domains under study engage with endings and ruptures. Bringing these dialogues together, we hope to shed light on how neoliberalism has altered the labor of disconnection, a particularly salient question at this historical moment.
Summaries of Articles “Re/Membering the Nation: Gaps and Reckoning within Biographical Accounts of Salvadoran Émigrés” by Susan Bibler Coutin juxtaposes state and émigré narratives of recovery after El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. During the years of war, people were disconnected by violence, forced relocations, and international emigration. Since the war’s end, the Salvadoran government has used biographical accounts of Salvadorans living abroad to re-brand the nation as a producer of flexible and successful subjects, and the émigrés as “good sons and daughters of the nation.” These state narratives attempt to create nostalgia and longing for El Salvador without reflecting upon the war or the continuing divisions caused by it. In contrast to such state efforts, Coutin argues, Central 803
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American youth narrate their biographies to reconnect their memories with historical events, and their former selves with their current selves. Student groups and NGOs would publicize these narratives and testimonials in the hopes that they might spark redress. Both the state and youth used biographies as political statements but for opposite ends—the state to glorify and erase, the youth to understand and transform. In “On Devils and the Dissolution of Sociality: Andean Catholics Voicing Ambivalence in Neoliberal Bolivia,” Krista Van Vleet explores the devil narratives that Catholics in Bolivia tell about family members or neighbors who have converted to evangelical Protestantism. She argues that these devil narratives allow native Andeans to discuss the intimate anxieties of livelihood and social relationships, power hierarchies, and political and economic exploitation. As Van Vleet observes, people often convert to evangelical Protestantism in search of moral guidelines that might allow them to navigate effectively the neoliberal transformations of Latin America. Yet in converting, people are also faced with the tasks of disconnecting from previous religious practices and communities, which often include their families. The devil narratives that Catholics tell about those who have converted are commentaries on this labor of disconnection. In this article, Van Vleet turns to the native Andeans left behind by their kin and neighbors’ search for a religion more compatible with neoliberal demands, exploring how they understand the consequences of conversion. Ilana Gershon’s article, “Un-Friend My Heart: Facebook, Promiscuity, and Heartbreak in a Neoliberal Age” describes how Facebook can function as a neoliberal technology, inasmuch as it is a technology that requires individuals to manage their alliances by publicly performing how they balance risk and responsibility. The neoliberal performances of self that Facebook fosters, but does not compel, are public performances of unweighted alliances expressed through the circulation of partial information, presenting a promiscuity that some of Gershon’s US undergraduate interviewees feared should be read literally. They have trouble maintaining romantic relationships while staying on Facebook, and argue that Facebook transforms them into selves they do not wish to be—suspicious and distrustful selves. In particular, people find it difficult to evaluate the significance of the other alliances portrayed on their lover’s Facebook profile—for instance, what does it mean that one’s boyfriend has so many women writing on his wall? Gershon discusses how knowledge circulates on Facebook, arguing that Facebook provides potato chips of information, 804
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enough to tantalize the appetite but not enough to satisfy. She concludes by analyzing the aspects of Facebook that contribute to her interviewees’ belief that it is a technology whose structures structure them, that Facebook transformed or enhanced undergraduates into people who have difficulty managing the risks of romantic relationships. Facebook requires its users to manage themselves as a flexible collection of alliances, skills, and tastes that needs to be constantly nurtured and enhanced. To distinguish one alliance from another on Facebook takes labor, and while it is relatively easy to distinguish one alliance as “The Lover,” it is far more difficult to express the strength of other alliances. Facebook offers insufficient information about alliances for people to live comfortably and ethically only with the knowledge it circulates, leading people to disconnect from Facebook, and occasionally to break up with each other. In “Intimate Dependence and its Risks in Neoliberal Japan,” Allison Alexy considers the debates involved in creating the appropriate level of connection or dependence between Japanese spouses. In the postwar era, popular talk and academic representations have regularly characterized Japanese marriages as disconnected in particular ways. For instance, in these normative descriptions of conjugal relationships, marriages work best when husbands and wives each have their own spheres of daily life, friends, and activities. As such, parenthood and relating to one another as parents was commonly believed to be enough of a connection to create a lasting marriage, and many ideals suggested that some disconnection was good for marriages. In recent decades, divorce has become a more socially viable option, partially as a result of legal changes that construct family members and spouses as individual social actors, rather than by their family membership alone. In this article, which is based on ethnographic fieldwork with divorced and divorcing people, Alexy describes contemporary debates about naming practices between spouses to trace how people question when disconnection can be necessary or harmful to marriages, and the work involved in creating the perfect degree of disconnection. Susan Lepselter examines increasingly popular US representations of “hoarding” in light of neoliberal understandings of selves as rational consumers in “This Disorder of Things: Hoarding Narratives in Popular Media.” In recent years, an onslaught of mediated narratives have portrayed hoarders as disconnected from daily life, suffering from both pathological practices of overconsumption and from the inability to complete the 805
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normalized purchasing cycle of disposal and re-consumption. Lepselter examines narratives in which hoarders are presented in all the spectacular chaos of their isolation, and then are therapeutically renormalized as managed, disciplined agents of consumption who may rediscover the social. The house of the hoarder, filled up with junk, is often described as being a space of “horror.” In most cases, the cause of “the horror” is the fact that the hoarder refuses to make rational choices as a consumer. Instead of choosing selectively, she chooses everything. As such, her house becomes so full that she is disconnected from friends and family, who cannot move through the space. She is also cloaked in the shame of garbage that, much like representations of fat and the over-consumption of food, is understood to metaphorically insulate the sufferer from normal social relations. It is specifically this failure to make a choice that is recognized as signifying a deep pathology in the neoliberal self. After the conversion to a more disciplined and rational disposition towards consumption, the hoarder is shown to reconnect with friends and family who are now able to enter the tidy home, in which objects are properly stored and displayed. This article analyzes, first, the ways in which uncontrolled, irrational consumption is understood to disconnect a neoliberal self from her network of social relations, and second, the ways in which experts attempt to resocialize the hoarder by teaching her to rationalize her habits of consumption and disposal. It is a spectacle with its own aesthetic and affective urgency, and what these hoarding narratives expose are the normally hidden, naturalized neoliberal structures of selfhood and sociability as embodied in people’s relationships to objects that slip in and out of being commodities. ■
Acknowledgments This collection began as a panel titled, “The Ethics of Disconnection” at the 2008 Society for Cultural Anthropology conference. We would like to thank Karen Ho and Ernestine McHugh, who were also on the panel and contributed lovely papers that continue to inspire how we think about ethics and neoliberalism. Our thanks as well to Richard Grinker for his critical encouragement throughout. ENDNOTES 1There
is contemporary evidence of growing fissures between neoliberals and neoconservatives present in the trouble that the McCain campaign had navigating the demands of various Republican constituencies and the subsequent tensions within the Republican party sparked by Tea Party politicians.
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