Depression in Times of Depression: After Neoliberalism and the Post-Welfare State

            John Clarke’s article, “After Neoliberalism?: Markets, States, and the Reinvention of Public Welfare,” conveniently ties together the Ahmed, Illouz, and McCarthy readings that Sarah and I presented last week.  The author moves swiftly from discussing happiness and emotion in terms of the economy and consumption practices to his main argument regarding neoliberalism.  I was particularly interested in the ways Clarke linked economic and emotional depression, and the implications of that linkage to the citizen’s faith in the neoliberal system.  Those who are made sad and unsure by a failing economy are less likely to go out and spend, the very act which sustains the economy.  Television advertisements are particularly apt examples for this linkage, particularly when we compare those that advertise anti-depression drugs with those that highlight frivolous (read: feminine) purchases:

Clarke writes, “there is something significant about the proliferation of terms describing mental states and emotional moods to talk about the state of markets.  In these troubled and turbulent times, we have become accustomed to hearing about markets that are anxious, nervous, and unsettled.”  The author goes on to illustrate the ways in which we hear, through the media, about the unsettled economic conditions of our times, and how these messages breed a “lack of faith, trust, and confidence” in political and economic leadership.  This dovetails nicely with McCarthy’s discussion of trauma in relation to neoliberalism, in which she points to the citizen’s realization of the failure of the neoliberalist state to adequately prevent individual suffering. 

Here, I want to point your attention to a fairly new Huffington Post section, entitled “All Work, No Pay:The False Promise of the American Economy.”  This special section began late last year and runs blog posts each month that point to the failures of the American system.  Often, these articles are written by those who (at least purport to) belong to low-income families that struggle with hunger, housing, and otherwise making ends meet despite employment and welfare.  These are the voices of, as McCarthy might put it, “neoliberal suffering.” 

Clarke’s article defines post-welfarism as “a period of unresolved tendencies” in which “welfarism remains a feature of institutional arrangements… and persists as a resource in popular discourse and popular memory that can be invoked in times of economic and social uncertainty.”  In other words, postwelfarism takes welfare for granted and sees it as an establishment that is nice to think about but is only taken seriously when it is needed.  The Foucauldian perspective on neoliberalism equates the concept with a governmentality reliant on individual self-governance and self-discipline, thus replacing or perhaps negating the welfare establishment.  This notion presupposes self-sufficiency, however, which, as the above example reflects, is hardly the case.