Political Agency: The Subject and the Citizen in the Time of Neoliberal Global Capitalism

Abstract

Today the notion of the ‘subject’ in the first capitalist world is reserved only for the citizens (fully acknowledged) as such of the first capitalist neoliberal world. Therefore the ‘old’ political ‘subjects’ are seen as a form of an archaic subjectivity and delegated to the so-called third worlds’ capitalisms. The consequences are terminal regarding political agency. Or to reformulate this going back to the most significant shift in the historicization of capitalism, the shift from biocapitalism to necrocapitalism (the shift, break and simultaneity of biopolitics and necropolitics and as well biopower and necropower), we see a twofold mechanism at work. First, if necropolitics presents a new mode of governmentality for neoliberal global capitalism that is a decision over the administration of death (as being opposed to biopolitics as a control over life) then we must ask in which concrete, political, economic and social ideological situation the sovereign decision over death without impunity is normalized and accepted. Second, who are those that are ‘selected’ and targeted as the goal of this necro ‘sovereign’ decision? The answers will pull a paradoxical difference inside the notion of the subject and as well respond to why any demand regarding political subjectivities in the time of a neoliberal global capitalism seems a bad joke and something obsolete. Article received: June 5, 2017; Article accepted: June 16, 2017; Published online: October 15, 2017; Original scholarly paper How to cite this article: Gržinić, Marina. "Political Agency: The Subject and the Citizen in the Time of Neoliberal Global Capitalism." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 14 (2017): 1-11. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i14.205

Keywords

• citizen, subject, biopolitics, necropolitics, biopower, necropower, sovereignty and governmentality