Fuck Neoliberalism

Simon Springer

Description

In a long history of ruination and destruction, neoliberalism is the most recent and virulent form of capitalism. This book is a call to action against the most persistent and pestilent disease of our time. Translated into over twenty different languages, the book offers a call to action that transcends local contexts and speaks to the violent global conditions of our neoliberal age.

Fuck Neoliberalism: Translating Resistance is a worldwide middle finger to the all-encompassing ideology of our era. The original essay sparked controversy in the academy when it was first released and has since spread around the world as enthusiastic rebels translated it into their own languages. This book brings those translations together, accompanied by short essays from each translator explaining why they translated the text and describing struggles against neoliberalism in their regions.

With translations into languages from across the globe, including Mandarin, German, Indonesian, Spanish, Hindi, Italian, Korean, and many more, this book highlights the international nature of resistance to the totalitarian ideology of neoliberalism. Featuring a cover produced by renowned artist Ed Repka (a.k.a. the King of Thrash Metal Art), this internationalized, heavy-metal rant against the all-powerful ideology highlights a chink in its armor. When people across the world find a way to communicate a shared message and stand together, resistance can be both beautiful and inspiring.

Sujets

• Labor relations
• Call to arms
• Anti-capitalism
• Capitalism

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 02 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629638133
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

In the dismal halls of academia s precarious contracted labour, it was delightful to hear these joyful strains of fuck it, yep, fuck it to hell. Simon Springer s ode to our current situation is the tantric yoga all our subjectivities need.
-Bek Conroy, autonomous and precarious artist activist academic
Fuck Neoliberalism is a call to action for an abandoned generation. Simon Springer wants us to find the everyday moments, conversations, and places where we can resist the social, political, and economic violence that we increasingly face and build a new world better than the current one. A must-read for anyone trying to understand and change this world we live in!
-Kean Birch, author of We Have Never Been Neoliberal: A Manifesto for a Doomed Youth (Zero Books, 2015)
In this rather brilliant essay, Springer joyfully calls time on the long night of neoliberal fuckery. By invoking a spirit of freedom, nonviolence, solidarity, and hope Fuck Neoliberalism invites us all to find ways to tramp the dirt down on the grave of neoliberalism and play our part in ensuring that all life on this beautiful planet can flourish once again.
-Richard J. White, coeditor of the Anarchism, Geography and the Spirit of Revolt trilogy : The Radicalization of Pedagogy, Theories of Resistance, and The Practice of Freedom (Rowman Littlefield International, 2016)
In Fuck Neoliberalism , Springer takes aim at more or less everyone (himself included) who continues to reproduce the power of the neoliberal cop in our heads. By thinking and saying the simple phrase fuck it, he argues, we can affirm our rejection, our critique of neoliberalism, but also crucially a desiring energy to create other ways of thinking, being, and doing beyond neoliberal logics. Not even writers of blurbs to be printed on the back of books are exempt from Springer s powerful and provocative call to arms. And on that note, fuck it, I m outta here.
-Anthony Ince, lecturer in Human Geography at Cardiff University
Fuck Neoliberalism
Translating Resistance
Simon Springer
Fuck Neoliberalism: Translating Resistance
Simon Springer
This edition 2021 PM Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-62963-789-1 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-62963-813-3 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019946100
Front cover artwork by Ed Repka 2018
Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA.
For all those who have been fucked over by neoliberalism and suffered as a result of its abhorrent violence. Fuck it to hell.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 English
CHAPTER 2 - Bengali
CHAPTER 3 - Simplified Chinese
CHAPTER 4 - Traditional Chinese
CHAPTER 5 - Farsi
CHAPTER 6 Fran ais - French
CHAPTER 7 Deutsch - German
CHAPTER 8 - Greek
CHAPTER 9 - Hindi
CHAPTER 10 Bahasa Indonesia - Indonesian
CHAPTER 11 Italiano - Italian
CHAPTER 12 - Japanese
CHAPTER 13 - Khmer
CHAPTER 14 - Korean
CHAPTER 15 - Nepali
CHAPTER 16 Polskie - Polish
CHAPTER 17 Portugu s - Portuguese
CHAPTER 18 Slovensk - Slovak
CHAPTER 19 Espa ol - Spanish
CHAPTER 20 Svenska - Swedish
CHAPTER 21 T rk - Turkish
NOTES
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Introduction

I wondered if the author Simon Springer really existed. That s the kind of name you d make up for a comic novel. But, yes, he s real, and he s spectacular.
- Steven Hayward, Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy, Pepperdine University
Bullying. Defamation. Harassment. Threats of violence. These are the battle scars of having dared to write a paper titled Fuck Neoliberalism. In defying standard academic convention and its penchant for pompousness, theoretical detachment from reality, and a general stick-up-the-butt protocol, the paper became a lightning rod for the conservative defenders of moral righteousness who descended upon me in legion following its publication. But even before the paper was published, the first sanctimonious guardian of the academic citadel arrived on his high horse. The chair of my former department had less than kind and supportive words for me. I first delivered the paper as a conference talk in San Francisco for the annual American Association of Geographers meeting in April 2016. The week after I returned from that meeting, he cornered me in the hallway and proceeded to berate me in front of a colleague and graduate student. He informed me that I was ruining the reputation of the department, and that my work couldn t be taken seriously. I replied that my paper, like all my work, was deadly serious. He insisted my work was a joke, and that it wasn t up to scientific standards. Well I m glad to have made him laugh, but otherwise I m not a scientist. So what? He told me that I should think about how my nonsense impacts upon my colleagues, and that the paper was completely inappropriate. It was the abstract in particular that irked him ( Yep, fuck it. Neoliberalism sucks. We don t need it ). I told him it was my academic freedom to write whatever I wanted. He insisted that academic freedom is one thing, but that it only goes so far and shouldn t extend to cursing in academic forums. Piling on the reactionary bullshit, he claimed that my use of profanity was akin to pornography and an embarrassment for the university. He indicated that senior administrators had been informed and my job was at risk. Amazing! We are off to the races!
Things were relatively calm for a good while thereafter. I didn t get fired, but I did submit a formal complaint to my Faculty Association about threats being made to my academic freedom. The result was ongoing harassment and bullying for the next few years at the hands of various administrators and senior colleagues. In terms of Fuck Neoliberalism, the response was extremely positive from other scholars but turned sour almost two years later when Powerline, one of the most popular conservative blogs in the United States ran a story about my paper called Neoliberal Madness. * The blog entry, written by Professor Steven Hayward, included a range of ad hominem attacks and stirred up a hornet s nest of hate in my direction. My email inbox was suddenly flooded with messages telling me what a horrible person I was, demanding that I outline an alternative world to capitalism if I was so clever, informing me that I should be ashamed of myself, and otherwise congratulating me on my efforts in proving doctorates in geography to be even more intellectually specious and idiotic than those in education, neo-Marxist/women s/queer/Latino/Black/Muslim/et al. studies and all other self-indulgent pseudo-intellectual endeavors. Lovely stuff. Powerline is well known for its inflamed comments section, where usually the spewing of hatred and all manner of bigotry and trolling are tolerated, but things got too hot for even them to handle. They eventually closed the discussion on Hayward s entry and deleted all the comments, perhaps recognizing that some of the threats that were being made on their page would place them in legal hot water if they didn t do something about it. But Professor Hayward can hardly be blamed, since he was only living up to his title of Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. The irony was not lost on me. Unfortunately, irony is not good old Stevie s strong suit. I posted the fabulous quote that opens this paper to my website, something he soon discovered and subsequently felt necessary to further blog about. * He insisted to his followers, lest anyone misinterpret his actual intentions, that he was calling me a boob. I wrote to him personally to thank him again for the glowing, boobtastic endorsement.
Endorsed Defamation and Forced Resignation
Not to be outdone, Canada s favorite plagiarist and rape culture denier Margaret Wente wrote a scathing-and once again ironic-piece on the supposed curbing of free speech on Canadian campuses. The Globe and Mail , Canada s national newspaper, gave her a soapbox, publishing a piece that sought to defend the dangerous and hateful right-wing speech of Rick Mehta and Jordan Peterson, while using me and my work as a scapegoat for all that is supposedly wrong with what she calls the hothouse world of today s universities. She was obviously quite twisted up about my paper, and, stripping the agency of students, she wrote that students don t need a safe space to protect them from the likes of Prof. Mehta. They need responsible adults to protect them from the likes of Prof. Springer, whose brand of rubbish is depressingly common at our institutions of higher learning. * She concluded with an open invitation for my harassment and the incitement for more hate mail to be sent my way, asserting, Too bad nobody complains about them. It s about time they did. The comment section there once again had to be closed for legal reasons or for abuse. Despite running a piece that directly attacked me and was clearly defamatory, the Globe and Mail refused to run my response. I asked for a forum of the same space that Wente was afforded to dribble her hatred, and they flatly refused. I was told to write a letter to the editor of 150 words or less. I did just that, and, ultimately, they published it, but not without first editing my words without consultation or permission to do s