The Clever Tropes of a Low Dishonest Decade: Philip Mirowski on the Epistemology of Neoliberalism by Paul A. Bové


The Clever Tropes of a Low Dishonest Decade: Philip Mirowski on the Epistemology of Neoliberalism
Title : The Clever Tropes of a Low Dishonest Decade: Philip Mirowski on the Epistemology of Neoliberalism
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : -
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 228
Publication : Published January 1, 2019

This is the first collection to measure the achievement of one of neoliberalism’s leading historians and critics. In a series of groundbreaking articles, Philip Mirowski and his collaborators have shown that neoliberalism, far from being a catch-all name for a globally resurgent capitalism, is, in fact, a movement driven by intellectuals and dedicated to the takeover of existing institutions. Anyone wanting to make sense of neoliberalism would do well to know who the players are and to understand how they have organized themselves. This volume builds on Mirowski’s work by putting him into conversation with scholars from outside economics and intellectual history, whose brief it is to amplify his insights, identify gaps in his arguments, and propose new lines of inquiry. The collection also contains three major new contributions by Mirowski himself: his critique of contemporary Marxism and its failure adequately to theorize neoliberalism, his lengthy review of Nancy Maclean’s much discussed Democracy in Chains, and an interview with members of the boundary 2 collective.

The Clever Tropes of a Low Dishonest Decade: Philip Mirowski on the Epistemology of Neoliberalism Reviews

  • Avery

    Preface: I came to this journal via an interest in the work of Philip Mirowski. There are a series of videos from this conference on Boundary2's youtube page. I had watched all of those at least twice before I read this journal. I disagree with the only other review which says that this gets into too much jargon in the second half of each paper.

    This journal is a good introduction to the work of Philip Mirowski and different perspectives about neoliberalism. The article which provides the best overview of Mirowski's work is David Golumbia's article Mirowski as Critic of the Digital.
    The Frank Pasquale piece is good and provides interesting insight into machine learning and AI with respect to how those technologies are applied to health and educational measurement outcomes. He argues that measurement is a political act, as in someone has to decide what to measure and how to measure it. This analysis of how knowledge gets produced socially meshes well with Mirowski's social epistemology.

    Mirowski's essay Hell is Truth Seen Too Late is provocative as it made me initially begin to rethink my Marxist commitments. It also provides an interesting restatement of his work since Serious Crisis.

    The Christian Thorne article is very good as well, although his video presentation is a good way to interact with the same ideas.

    The Bruce Robbins piece is fine, literary Analysis isn't usually my thing.

    The Annie McClanahan piece was contentious and I didn't like it until the last few pages, when I came around to understanding her argument. This piece has a lot of quotes and it is a little hard to follow to be fair.

    Over all for a generalist audience with some political theory knowledge going into it: 4/5
    For anyone who really cares about the Mirowski thesis and worldview: 5/5

    Again I heavily disagree with the other review of this which says that it is too jargon-full half way through the essays. It is certainly the case that the academic language utilized in this is of a higher level than one may encounter in more pedestrian political theory, but it is by no means impenetrable or unreadable.