ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author argues that neoliberalism signifies a new historical conjuncture characterized most pressingly by the forces of debt. Debt and indebtedness have emerged as the default forms of life for young people in the neoliberal historical conjuncture. Addressing neoliberalism as an educational project which produces particular forms of subjectivity is important for recognizing the degree to which questions about subjectivity, identity, and morality, as well as the limits of political possibility and political imagination are, in the current milieu, also necessarily questions about debt and indebtedness. Corporatized modes of education are contributing to a dominant mode of subjectivity in which youth are predisposed to the swindle of consumerism and indebtedness. The author suggests that a shared set of forces is bearing down on young people in such a way as to call for a new analytic category: indebted youth.