Neoliberalism, Publicity, Citizenship

Abstract

The political milieu we are in is called a neoliberal order which has a peculiar rationality and a distinctive logic of governing. Neoliberalism has a specific manner which regulates all aspects of the existence in an economical way. It is claimed that this manner dissolves the basic features of democracy, especially its political sense (Brown, 2018). In other words, demos, people’s claim to be political subjects, is cancelled in this new order. Historically, the first texts of political philosophy defined people as Homo Politicus who were predestined to live in the polis and had no other possibility to exist out of the polis (Plato, Aristotle). When the modern period came forth, people were provided political rights and publicity as citizens in the scope of the theory of popular sovereignty ensured by the social contract theories (Locke, Rousseau). Today, it is argued that the subject of the neoliberal era is Homo Oeconomicus (Brown, 2018). In this kind of governmentality (Foucault, 2015), all the needs and desires of human beings turn out to be profitable ventures, and people are actually designed in accordance with the economic criteria. This design cannot mean a monetization. We think and act like market actors by any measure, for example education, health, well-being, and family life, and it is a result of the subjectivity created by neoliberalism. The neoliberal rationality distributes the market model to all the fields of human needs and planifies people as homo-oeconomicus in the forms of market actors (Brown, 2018). Some theoreticians emphasize the fact that even the bio-politics of Foucault gave way to a more advanced version of psycho-politics and where the psychologic techniques (Stiegler, 2012) capture the souls of humans and defines them as psychopolitical beings (Han, 2019). There is a common idea underlying all these definitions. Noliberalism as the most current dominant regime replaces the meanings and values of democracy with market values (Brown, 2018). As a result, everyone sees himself/herself as a corporation, and accepts himself/herself as “a worker who exploits the labor of himself/herself” and sees himself as both as “a master and a slave”. The old-fashioned class struggle is now the “people’s own struggle with their inner selves” (Han, 2019). Neoliberal psychopolitics exploits everyone, capturing their “souls” in their own singularity. The subject of the neoliberal regime “is a devastated one who is under the pressure of performing more and more under the command of optimizing himself/herself”, “is exposed to a perpetual psychopolitical orientation” and is only “a selfhood entrepreneur who exploits himself/herself” (Han, 2019). This study aims to claim in this framework that there is a possibility of being political while the only option is being a spectator and not an actor. This claim makes it necessary to apply to the texts of Arendt who thinks that understanding is a judgment of what is going on. Arendt discusses again the differentiation between Vita Contemplativa and Vita Activa (Arendt, 2018), and it is argued that the subjects of neoliberalism have political potential as citizens thanks to the relationship between Vita Contemplativa and Vita Activa.