An education in the new neoliberal subjectivity

Abstract

This paper analyses how a new neoliberal subjectivity is being inculcated that is tailored to the advanced capitalist society in which we live, and the role played by formal and informal education in this reconfiguration. Present day neoliberal globalisation is generating a specific way of life and social relations, of understanding the world and a social construct which is helping to build a particular subjectivity. Through the mass media, laws and customs that we internalise and through the content transmitted in formal education, a change is being wrought in the mindset of people, who are urged to perceive and conduct themselves as a business, entrepreneurs of their very selves. This new capitalist subjectivity, where the logic of the market is the new pervasive standard, has been consolidated from State-wide level to the very core of subjectivity. Thus, the definition of the political subject has been radically transformed, converting the neoliberal vision into a worldview.