NotNormativelyHuman 189
of (a) neoliberal governance and (b) the emergence of a bio-tech
industry.
Neoliberalism^37 is a global (and globalizing) project of capitalist
restructuring and rescaling, not just of the economy but of the public
sphere in general, and perhaps nowhere more so than in the United
States.Its"predatoryformations"(Sassen13)havebeeninterveninginto
the normalization of human life in countless ways but most incisively
through its relentless drive to downsize "government." That term—for
whichneoliberalsreservetheirstrongestsenseofabhorrence—isusually
meant as a conceptual shorthand term for everything that has to go by
the board in restructuring projects, especially entitlement programs in
thesocialservicesandhealthcaresectors.Theongoingpolemicsagainst
the social covenant to protect the weak and the needy unfold in many
arenas of public life and take many guises (Ong,Neoliberalism177-90;
Sassen1-61;Massumi,Power1-6).Whatisreasonablyobvious,though,
is that the neoliberal crusade especially targets human beings with non-
normative biologies. Their civic and cultural status are becoming
uncertain as they are often branded, together with "welfare queens" and
delinquent minority youth—two groups which, by being black, already
have a non-normative index—, as the undeserving recipients of lavish
public support. In the United States and other countries of the Global
North,producingtheindependent,self-sufficientindividualasthesocial
and cultural norm has resulted in ever greater numbers of people,
(^37) From my disciplinary subject position, I cannot claim to possess independent
economic expertise. This section therefore is based on the Althusserian gesture
(outlined above) of studying the presence of an abstract concept, here
neoliberalism, by way of its material effects; and these effects are quite
noticeableandaffectmanypeople:theerosionofsocialdemocracyin thewake
of discrediting of the New Deal welfare state as fiscally wasteful, an all-out on
redistributive social arrangements as pandering idleness and apathy—
culminating in the idea of the self-sufficient, self-enterprising individual that
does not need social entitlements or,s if he or she does, then it is the person's
own fault. It is especially this latter vision that interacts in crucial ways with,
even gives new life to, biological normativities. For a recent overall critique of
neoliberalism cf. Chakravarty and Ferreira da Silva, 380 et passim; for a focus
especially on the biological side cf. Giroux, esp. 178-80, also Butler and
Athanasioux,11,20,29,43,65,89,121.