Education, neoliberalism, democracy, and politics: dilemma and challenges that faces us in our contemporaneity

Abstract

This paper, implicitly animated by the thoughts of Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze and, above all, Michel Foucault, seeks to constitute an assemblage between education, neoliberalism, democracy, and politics in our present, pointing out and problematizing some of the dilemmas and challenges that we face in our contemporary times. Starting from a paradox that riddles both education and democracy, it critically reviews some of the ambitions, peculiarities, and excessive unmeasured pretensions of modern education, until the rupture of “May 68”, which imposes a redefinition of theoretical, philosophical, and political perspectives of action. It is then argued that the advent of neoliberalism was accompanied by a movement that, simultaneously, empties politics, making it secondary, eclipsing it and, furthermore, exchanging it for techno-business management, thus weakening not only democracy, but also the conditions of possibility of instituting an insurgent education. In this sense, the paper examines a series of factors involved in this process (the crisis of financial-speculative capitalism of 2008 and its effects, the phenomenon of social networks and algorithmic governmentality, processes of subjectivation and precariousness of “the living”, the rise of neo-fascism and “security democracies”, among others), highlighting the importance of returning politics to the first plan of educational actions and theorization.