Still neoliberalism?

Still neoliberalism? We pose this as a question in order to call attention to the problematic that runs through this issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, that of how to account for, and respond to, the tawdry array of authoritarian (re)turns that have been witnessed in various parts of the world in the decade since the global financial crisis of 2008—from Trump to Turkey, from the Brexit debacle to the Brazilian coup, and much else besides. While each of these authoritarian advances, to be sure, has its own local particularities and conjunctural specificities, one of the questions that lurks behind (and between) each of them is whether neoliberalism—as an always mutating project of state-facilitated market rule, propelled not least by its own limitations, contradictions, and reactionary tendencies— remains a salient and appropriate signifier, whether understood as some nebulous background condition or something more precise. (And here we run immediately into thorny issues of definition: neoliberalism as a discredited but dogged policy paradigm, as a crisis-prone mode of regulation, as an ideological default setting or socially and institutionally and embedded political rationality, as a bundle of reconstituted subjectivities and governmentalities, as a hegemonic project or formation?). But is it still neoliberalism? Do the uneven but apparently concerted turns toward authoritarian rule, which have sometimes been accompanied by a selective repudiation or partial retreat from some principles and practices of neoliberal governance, signify an “end” to neoliberalism? Or do they tell us instead that, all along, this was little more than an ideological mirage, or some misreading of surface appearances? Or should recent (re)turns to austerity, revanchism, and authoritarianism be interpreted as yet another late-stage mutation in this restlessly uneven and shape-shifting phenomenon?