<nettime> Digital leftism in a globalised world? (Trumpism vs. neoliberalism)

[allan siegel <allan@allansiegel.info>]

Hello,

Trying to catch up with all the various points of view being thrown
around here; but Alexander Bard makes an important point about the
“sloppy” use of terms and the inevitable consequences’, i.e. loss of
meaning and discursive traction… So, I hope this adds some clarity:

"Neoliberalism looks forward to a global order contoured by a
universalized market rationality in which cultural difference is at most
a commodity, and nation-state boundaries are but markers of culinary
differences and provincial legal arrangements, while American
neoconservatism looks backward to a national and nationalist order
contoured by a set of moral and political attachments inflected by the
contingent ambition of Empire. More generally, neoliberalism confidently
identifies itself with the future, and in producing itself as normal
rather than adversarial does not acknowledge any alternative futures.
Neoconservatism, on the other hand, identifies itself as the guardian
and advocate of a potentially vanishing past and present, and a
righteous bulwark against loss, and constitutes itself a warring against
serious contenders for an alternative futurity, those it identifies as
"liberalism" at home and "barbarism" abroad.” Wendy Brown

If the left, and/or other progressive social forces, cannot imagine,
define, articulate and build upon something other these two calamitous
polarities than the future, indeed. looks very bleak… rebel cities need
much more than alternative rhetoric to become the bulwark against
nationalist myopias...

allan

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