Neoliberalism and Political Theology is a thoughtful and often insightful essay about a topic that has little to do with its title. The latter, along with the author's introduction, leads the reader to believe that his book will contribute to the recent trend in political theory that, taking its cue from the German legal scholar Carl Schmitt, asserts that all important political concepts are theological principles in secularized form. Raschke implies as much when he claims that his project “undertakes the venture of mapping the deep political theology of neoliberalism” (4). In practice, his book does no such thing. Readers would be hard pressed to find in it any extended argument that neoliberalism—that is, the market fundamentalism that was theorized by economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and that has become the common sense of present-day globalized society—originates in the theological teachings of a particular religious tradition. Raschke's real concern lies elsewhere: specifically, in the way in which the neoliberal economics has been tethered to the progressive agenda known as “identity politics.” A more fitting title for the book would be one that he gives to a chapter: “Progressive Neoliberalism and Its Discontents.”
Because so much of the book is devoted to analyzing a broad spectrum of recent theory, following Raschke's own argument can be tricky. Raschke takes us on a guided tour through contemporary political thought. He deals with scores of theorists and philosophers; those who matter most to him are Michel Foucault (specifically his lectures on pastoral power), Gilles Deleuze, Wendy Brown, Giorgio Agamben, and Nancy Fraser, in addition to several classic European philosophers, notably Friedrich Nietzsche and Immanuel Kant. This tour is an interesting one, as Raschke is a capable guide: he presents clear and cogent synopses of these thinkers and extracts novel meaning from well-known texts. But this “connect-the-theorists” approach to building an argument frequently obscures the author's own conclusions. On his tour, Raschke provides eloquent and useful commentary on the sites to which he calls our attention, but we are often uncertain about where we are or where his trajectory is taking us. While we may appreciate Raschke's admiration for grand theory, some may wish that he would tell us more about how the philosophical schemas he presents so clearly shed light on contemporary society—which, at least nominally, remains his theme.
These reservations notwithstanding, Raschke makes some provocative claims about his main—if sometimes unacknowledged—topic: the complicity between progressive politics and neoliberalism. His main inspiration is a series of essays written in 2017 by the political philosopher Nancy Fraser on “progressive neoliberalism.” Raschke shows how Fraser's insights were prefigured by Foucault's claim that liberalism originates in pastoral power—that is, a deterritorialized, shepherd-like authority legitimized by its concern for a flock's well-being—and by Brown's insight that the neoliberal idea of the free market is tied to a distorted sense of civic duty, which she dubs “sacrificial citizenship.” Kant's conception of human freedom as an abstract and universal imperative that is detached from concerns with ordinary happiness is the template, Raschke argues, for progressive neoliberalism. The lubricant for liberal society is “intensive signification” (93), which generates diversity and political passion in limitless quantities. Identity, in this context, is best understood as “the reserve currency of neoliberal governmentality” (95). While some political philosophers (Francis Fukuyama most famously) hailed liberal democracy as a system that maximizes the politics of recognition, Raschke suggests that such societies achieve little more than commodified difference—that is, difference with an exchange value on the market of cultural goods—rather than anything resembling mutual understanding and resulting solidarities. Hitting his stride towards the book's conclusion, Raschke vituperates against the “moral privilege” invoked by neoliberal elites (150), their cosmopolitan disdain for populist outrage at the economic impact of globalization, the “prevalence of private virtue signalling,” and the “narcissistic self-aggrandisement” lurking “behind the screen of an overstimulated moral fervor for righting all the world's wrongs” (153). Against these trends, Raschke places his hopes in deeper social solidarity, in which transcendent values traditionally embodied by religion are summoned to play a decisive role.
Embedded in an essay that purports to be about neoliberalism's deep theological underpinnings, one finds, in short, a polemic against progressive liberalism's Faustian pact with free-market values. The force of Raschke's critique is, consequently, blunted by the roundabout character of his argument: if the only payoff for invoking political theology is the unobjectionable claim that neoliberalism is rooted in moral values, the detour hardly seems necessary. It is also unclear why extended disquisitions on, say, Agamben are needed, when Raschke could have engaged with authors other than Fraser who have specifically grappled with the problem of progressive neoliberalism, such as the French geographer Christophe Guilluy, the philosopher Jean-Claude Michéa, the British commentator David Goodhart, and Luc Boltanksi and Eve Chiapello in their landmark study The New Spirit of Capitalism (Verso, 1999). It is almost as if Raschke felt the need to conceal his esoteric critique of progressive neoliberalism in an exoteric (and, at least in principle, less controversial) argument about neoliberal's theological roots. This is a shame: Raschke's objections to progressive neoliberalism are forceful and prescient, though far from completely spelled out. One hopes that he will revisit these arguments in a more direct manner in subsequent publications.
