Expanding the margins of financialization: the proliferation of neoliberalism from below

by Verónica Gago (UNAM / University of Buenos Aires)

Photo credit: AP

We propose to think in terms of the proliferation of neoliberalism from below and its reinforcement by a money flow that organizes an entire system of popular finances. From this follows the importance of recognizing certain distinctions within such flows: on the one hand, finances that circulate from below and fuel a monetary system capable of settling certain initiatives and, on the other, financialization driven from the top down through particular state, banking, and nonbanking financial institutions. What interests us is precisely the conflicting logic of assemblage deployed by both dynamics, because here is where the question of the production of subjectivity, which capital attempts to impose as a social relation, emerges as a terrain of dispute.