is it possible stanley fish really didn't know what neoliberalism was?

or is this column a long exercise in pretend naivete?

also, he spends a lot of time trying to get a grasp on the subject (or pretending to try to get a grasp, as the case may be), and then at the end says something about boycotting israeli academics -- which seems like a much smaller issue, and really a total diversion.

honestly this kind of column sort of scares me a little, because it'd be nice to be able to assume that there actually was an educated, intellectual class that, like, knew things. but i guess that's not anything to try to take comfort in.

also, my apologies for starting a thread about stanley fish.

I think you're onto what the column is doing. He knows there's more to neoliberalism than he lets on, but starting with a "everybody's dissing neoliberalism- wuzzat?" he can actualy reverse engineer the column into an elaborate lead-in for his most recent book. He only takes from his various leftist academic pundit punching bags what he needs in order to lead to his current hobbyhorse.

his current hobbyhorse seems to be more or less the same as david horowitz's. but at least horowitz is insane and therefore kind of entertaining.

stanley you old dog you

I passed him in the student union building a couple of weeks ago; he was drinking Einstein Bros coffee.

If he had passed you at near light speed, you would have grown old and died before he finished his coffee.

Alternately he might have vomited up whole beans.

Charming picture

http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg260/brainstorblog/fishvalasquez.jpg

so can someone sum up who is this dude

i bet wikipedia could

I am reading about it but like why is he popular enough that so many people on ILX know about him? I feel like I should know about him.

sorry for pinefoxin

He's rather good on Milton and rather uneven at the NYT. On campus he's an enigma. Several friends in the College of Law have yet to take a class with him.

his critical theory is taught in most lib arts programs at some point so that gives hoim a lot of exposure to yr avg ilxer i'd say

I basically know him as "that reader response theory guy," but I don't know much about reader response theory, although what I've heard makes it sound kinda dumb.

i used to only judge guys like this based on how readable their stuff was and fish was passable

His early writings on Milton and on the heavyweights of 17th c. prose (Burton, Hooker, Browne) has stood the test of time and is still some of the best critical writing on the period that we have: learned, shapely, provocative, fearlessly judgmental. His most recent Milton book has taken a turn towards the shrill and the reductive.

When's he's speaking as a public intellectual, it's another matter, and the variation in quality is noticeable.

From "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos" on, he has become a polemicist crank who seems to never tire of getting a rise out of his own professorial elite class by writing essays that tweek that class for its cant, pretension and smugness (so far, so good).

His response to the Sokal affair was him in polemicist mode at his very best, a defense of critical theory and a reasoned response to a stupid prank; his NYT columns would be infuriating were it not so transparently the case that they are engineered to be "infuriating" to his peers. I found his "some day people will really like Bush" essay a case in point of weak challops-ery.

have stood, obv

His response to the Sokal affair was him in polemicist mode at his very best, a defense of critical theory and a reasoned response to a stupid prank

otm

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/fish.html

The rosetta stone of neoliberalism:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1982/09/05/a-neo-liberals-manifesto/21cf41ca-e60e-404e-9a66-124592c9f70d/?utm_term=.b82fb505c3c0

but it's only in one language?

Our primary concerns are community, democracy, and prosperity. Of them, economic growth is most important now, because it is essential to almost everything else we want to achieve. Our hero is the risk-taking entrepreneur who creates new jobs and better products. "Americans," says Bradley, "have to begin to treat risk more as an opportunity and not as a threat."

We want to encourage the entrepreneur not with Reaganite policies that simply make the rich richer, but with laws designed to help attract investors and customers. For example, Hart is proposing a "new capacity" stock, a class of stock issued "for the explicit purpose of investment in new plants and equipment." The stock would be exempt from capital gains tax on its first resale. This would give investors the incentive they now lack to target their investment on new plants and equipment instead of simply trading old issues, which is what almost all the activity on Wall Street is about today.

what a load of steaming bullshit to be peddling in 2017. Get fucked.

NEO-LIBERALISM is a terrible name for an interesting, if embryonic, movement.

* puts pistol to head *

I'm always forced to conclude this sort of thing is willful bad faith, cos no way can these kinds of people be that stupid

Tough times for liberals at the dawn of the Reagan era, man.

But at least being American gives it an understandable context compared to when Blair and his acolytes pull this shit

As a practical matter, the country can't afford to spend money on people who don't need it -- my aunt who uses her Social Security check to go to Europe or your brother- in-law who uses his unemployment compensation to finance a trip to Florida.

Oh right, that guy. We all have one of those.

dithering on the technocratic fringes while america burns to the ground

hey, the system as is is working great, we just need to silence the complainers

first of all this article is 35 years old so you guys complaining about it being inappropriate in 2017 are idiots

second of all if you actually read the article it's pretty unobjectionable

like in the article he advocates for cutting defense spending, eliminating tax cuts, proposing infrastructure bills & pulling out of NATO. ok if you already knew that these were foundational elements of neoliberalism (nb in 2017 they are not) but i suspect none of you actually read it.

it's a shitty manifesto that represents a mindset still poisoning the "moderate left" here in the UK. Like I said, other polities may feel differently

nv i'm not even clear that you read it since "hey, the system as is is working great, we just need to silence the complainers" seems to have nothing to do with what is written within- it's actually very pessimistic about the health of the US in 1982. it's like you're conflating hillary clinton's campaign w/ some dude's op ed.

Of course I skimmed it :D

But how does the appeal to entrepreneurs and narrowly targeted welfare not represent an effort to preserve market capitalism from its discontents?

i mean look if you're complaint is that it's essentially pro capitalism i don't know what to tell u there's no wellspring of communism coming. even bernie style socialism is an effort to preserve market capitalism from its discontents. and they both are trying to do it in the same way - by giving the discontent less to be unhappy about.

your*

And it isn't anti tax breaks, it just argues for using them to stimulate job creation, which is always a bad faith argument, as if all jobs are created equal

nb i disagree with many of the prescriptions in there - from what i understand targeted social programs create more overhead then just cutting everyone a check. but there's other stuff in there (new infrastructural targets, incentives for the market to invest in manufacturing, reinstating the draft, anti-credentialism) that is at the very least provocative and probably some good ideas.

I'm not really making a fully automated luxury space communism argument Mordy, I just believe that neolib economics are more concerned with preserving the status quo than ameliorating it

but like at least 2 to 3 of the policy recommendations there are about creating more manufacturing jobs. i think you're attacking a strawman - or attacking what neoliberalism has become but not dealing with the actual substance of the article.

And I sort of accept the idea that there are some positive ideas in this kind of thinking - but they aren't central to the individual political manifestoes this stuff engendered - New Labour's "achievements" were so marginal that after 10+ years of total government dominance it took months to wash them away

Sorry I'm slightly crossposting with you cos of my shit phone

Anyway point taken not addressing it blow by blow but c'mon, where these ideas ended up is as relevant as critiquing Marx via the gulags

I.e. relevant, not trying to be dismissive

To be fair to Peters, who was the first of the bunch, this is not what neoliberalism became post-Dukakis.

I.e. relevant, not trying to be dismissive

lol yeah that could go either way suspect a lot of ppl would find critiquing Marx via the gulags to be specious

yeah I know

still waiting for an honest effort from somebody to combine the flexibility, responsiveness and autonomy of market economics with a legitimate concern for equality of opportunity and sustainability

Didn’t Marty Peretz write this same sorta manifesto in the New Republic, either in the early 70s or early 80s?

I think it's fair to say that on some of the specifics what we call neoliberalism today is probably further to the right than the policy program laid out in that 1982 article, but the underlying philosophy and approach strikes me as very similar and familiar.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world

I thought this was an absolutely booming Neoliberalism long read from The Graun, last month.

I shall stop skimming links while multitasking at work, thanks Mordy

hey, the Third Way is recycling their 1992 joeks!

https://splinternews.com/work-until-you-die-and-other-great-ideas-from-third-way-1823795833

At least splinter news admits up front what its purpose is

Like how this piece goes beyond a neoliberal framing.

https://archive.ph/xtFte