From Exploitation to Playful Exploits

In his landmark essay, “The Essence of Neoliberalism,” Pierre Bourdieu defined neoliberalism as the deregulation of financial markets to stimulate and protect corporations, where “all collective structures that could serve as an obstacle to the logic of the pure market” are called into question. ¹ Neoliberalism as understood by Bourdieu is a term that references the ongoing delegation of responsibility for health care, education, and general welfare to the individual by states and corporations in the era of globalization. Under the veiled discourse of the “free market”—or individual “freedom of choice”—public services are eradicated and public spaces eliminated.