The (Ir)rationality of Austerity

• In Event: 60.021 - Doing Less With Less? Learning and Austerity

Abstract

This paper takes up the problem of austerity, which is a defining experience within neoliberalism, including in education. Starting from Foucault’s analysis of neoliberalism, and looking beyond technical objections to austerity policies in terms of their economic effects, the paper considers the moral economy that undergirds the impulse to discipline that characterizes austerity, the underlying governmentality that makes this impulse so resistant to critique, and the crucial expression of these effects in term of both curriculum and education policy. The paper argues that a counter-pedagogy that is adequate to this terrain has to work toward a different social rationality, rather than simply condemning austerity’s failures.

Author

• Noah De Lissovoy, The University of Texas - Austin