ABSTRACT
Under neoliberalism everything either is for sale or is plundered for profi t: public lands are looted by logging companies and corporate ranchers; politicians willingly hand the public’s airwaves over to powerful broadcasters and large corporate interests without a dime going into the public trust; the environment is polluted and despoiled in the name of profi t making just as the government passes legislation to make it easier for corporations to do so; whatever public services have survived the Reagan-Bush era are gutted in order to lower the taxes of major corporations (or line their pockets through no-bid contracts, as in the infamous case of Halliburton); entire populations, especially those of color and who are poor are considered disposable, schools more closely resemble either jails or high-end shopping malls, depending on their clientele, and teachers are forced to get revenue for their school by hawking everything from hamburgers to pizza parties. The gutting of the social state under neoliberalism is matched by the weakening of interpersonal relations and public life. Atomization is fuelled by a rabid individualism mirrored in an utterly privatized conception of citizenship, competitive and hierarchical structures that shape everyday work relations, and a government-sanctioned culture of fear and insecurity whose organizing pedagogy aims at reducing people’s desires and thoughts to obsessively “safeguarding their private lives” (Arendt, 1973, p. 338).
