Mutant neoliberalism rethinks debates about the fate of neoliberal governance and capitalism in the twenty-first century. Rather than treating neoliberalism as a monolithic ideology to be defeated once and for all or embraced and sustained in its entirety, this book theorizes its multiple and mutant forms: as an intellectual and political project, a program of economic governance, a form of normative reason, and an order of material production. In doing so, it opens up new ways of understanding the relationship between neoliberalism and contemporary political ruptures. In doing so, it opens up new ways of understanding the relationship between neoliberalism and contemporary political ruptures.

The chapters show how decades of neoliberal governance, policies, and depoliticization created the conditions for new social and political forces, while reflecting on whether these actors will challenge, reconfigure, or expand the reach of neoliberalism in various parts of the world. From this point of view, the ascendant far-right reactionary forces do not look so much like the gravediggers of neoliberalism as their own mutant progeny. Political ruptures may amount not to mere reprobations or affirmations of neoliberal programs, but rather to catalyze new developments in the rationality of market rules.