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Notes
Many thanks to Lincoln Dahlberg for his comments on an earlier draft of this article.
I say surprising because Harvey would typically be positioned as a neo-Marxist interested in poststructuralist questions, rather than a poststructuralist Marxist (see Callinicos, 2006). Yet discerning analogies between Harvey's work and post-Marxists like Laclau and Mouffe (2001) should not come as a surprise, as Harvey's (2006) interest in ‘relational’ forms of spatiality suggests points of convergence with the discourse theory of the latter.
The argument here follows John Gray's perceptive assessment of Hayek, perhaps the most subtle of neoliberalism's philosopher kings: ‘It is as a critic of socialism, not a philosopher of liberalism, that Hayek will be remembered’ (Gray, 1998, 146).
The actual formulation in the text is: ‘Sweden has moved from “embedded neoliberalism” [sic] to “embedded neoliberalism”’.
The notion that the discursive and the material are co-constitutive of each other is the position generally followed by critical realists (see Jessop, 2004). The position assumed by poststructuralist discourse theory (see Laclau and Mouffe, 2001) is even more radical, arguing that the ontological basis of a distinction between the discursive and the material is essentially redundant.
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Phelan, S. Messy Grand Narrative or Analytical Blind Spot? When Speaking of Neoliberalism. Comp Eur Polit 5, 328–338 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cep.6110111
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cep.6110111