New Neoliberalism and the Other

Description

New Neoliberalism and the Other: Biopower, Anthropophagy, and Living Money, by Giuseppe Cocco and Bruno Cava, offers a provocative and critical analysis of contemporary neoliberalism through the lens of Brazilian social theory, postcolonial thought, and radical political philosophy. The authors explore how neoliberalism has evolved into a new form—more pervasive, flexible, and deeply embedded in social and biopolitical relations. They argue that this "new neoliberalism" extends beyond traditional economic models, shaping subjectivities, forms of life, and even bodies through mechanisms of control and governance that operate at a micro-level of existence. Central to their analysis are the concepts of biopower, drawing on Foucault's ideas about power over life itself, and anthropophagy, an idea rooted in Brazilian modernism that metaphorically represents cultural cannibalism—the act of absorbing and transforming influences. Cocco and Cava reinterpret anthropophagy as a strategy of resistance and subversion against global capitalism, suggesting that marginalized communities and social movements can appropriate and reinvent neoliberal mechanisms for emancipatory ends. They also examine "living money", highlighting how contemporary financial capitalism turns life and social cooperation into sources of value, making life itself a site of capital extraction. By blending theoretical rigor with political urgency, New Neoliberalism and the Other calls for new forms of collective resistance and reimagines how politics and subjectivity can be reconfigured in the face of capitalism's evolving powers. The book is a deep dive into global neoliberalism from a Global South perspective, offering readers a unique and critical framework for understanding the contemporary world.