AustLit

'The neoliberal revolution is not only an economic but also a sociopolitical project that requires institutional and cultural changes to support and legitimize it. The “adaptive capacity of neoliberalism itself” (Bergeron 67) has not only enabled a refoundation of its project during each crisis, but has especially made possible its reinforcement in terms of both accumulation and symbolism. Despite the threats and social disaffection faced by neoliberalism, it continues to be a “hegemonic project” (Hall 728), deeply and thoroughly normalized, even though it actually represents a denaturation and dehumanization of the economy and its goals and threatens the sustainability of life in all its forms. The evident conflict between capitalism's logic of accumulation and the logic of care in human lives makes it difficult to assume the premise that neoliberal legitimacy requires people's rational support or sympathy for its project, as Marie Moran has shown. On the contrary, the reason for people's (eminently inertial) acceptance of it lies in the ability of the capitalist and neoliberal social logic to “saturate” ordinary spaces, dilute in habituality (69), and, especially, ingrain itself in “the hearts and souls” of people, as one of its major creators, Margaret Thatcher, once expressed it (qtd. in Butt).' (Publication summary)