From Panopticon to Prisoner’s Dilemma: Neoliberal Subjects as Prisoners of Reason

Speaker: S. M. Amadae

25th April, 4pm

RHB 150, Goldsmiths

In this talk, S. M. Amadae (MIT and University of Helsinki) will explore how the pedagogy of game theory and practice of institutional design generates neoliberal subjects and neoliberal governance.  This analytic approach enables us to understand the legitimation of a reactionary interventionist security state as well as the neopaternalism of ‘nudge’.  Neoliberalism is staunchly counter-Enlightenment in reducing agency to consumptive preference satisfaction.  It anticipates the further step toward algorithmic governance and mindless rationality consistent with treating information as signals sustaining rational choice rather than elementary ingredients to be vetted and shared to jointly create horizons of meaning and institutions based on shared expectations.

S. M. Amadae is author of Prisoners of Reason: Game Theory and Neoliberal Political Economy (Cambridge, 2016) and Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism (Chicago, 2003)

All are welcome and no registration is necessary. Details on how to find Goldsmiths are here.

 

You can now listen to a podcast of this talk via the link below