Abstract

This review of Wendy Brown’s Undoing the Demos considers the claim that contemporary processes of neoliberalism are damaging the core principles of democracy. It is argued that Brown is right to follow Foucault in defining neoliberalism as a form of political rationality, but that core arguments of the book could be developed further through attention to the following points: (1) the operation of neoliberal politics and practices outside of the US context; (2) the position of Austrian thought within the history of neoliberal reason; (3) the problematic status of homo economicus within neoliberal thought; (4) why the ‘soft power’ of neoliberalism has proved so effective; and (5) how a Marxist theory of capital might be developed alongside Foucauldian critique of neoliberalism.