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9781137569424

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'Keri Day insightfully probes the role of religion in neoliberalism, incorporating a fresh, exciting, politicized understanding of the erotic. Trenchant critiques of neoliberalism foreground some of the most socioeconomically vulnerable populations. US womanist and black feminist ideas alongside European theorists productively aid Day's re-envisioning of human flourishing in economic life. Concrete examples and clarity of writing make this a great text for the classroom.' - Traci C. West, Professor of Ethics and African American Studies, Drew University Theological School, USA 'Day argues persuasively that an appropriate response to neoliberalism requires religious imagination grounded in Jewish, Christian, and black feminist and womanist religio-cultural perspectives. After Day deconstructs the economics of neoliberalism, she proposes a new socioeconomic order grounded in a realized eschatology, an affective politics, and a pragmatic politics of hope. Indeed, Day envisions local beloved communities as the crux of a new global order. This book can be used in both seminary classrooms and doctoral seminars because Day expertly uses theories and cultural artifacts to craft religious ethical reflection that informs and inspires us to flourish as moral agents and communities in the twenty-first century.' - Marcia Y. Riggs, J. Erskine Love Professor of Christian Ethics, Columbia Theological Seminary, USA

'Keri Day insightfully probes the role of religion in neoliberalism, incorporating a fresh, exciting, politicized understanding of the erotic. Trenchant critiques of neoliberalism foreground some of the most socioeconomically vulnerable populations. US womanist and black feminist ideas alongside European theorists productively aid Day's re-envisioning of human flourishing in economic life. Concrete examples and clarity of writing make this a great text for the classroom.' - Traci C. West, Professor of Ethics and African American Studies, Drew University Theological School, USA 'Day argues persuasively that an appropriate response to neoliberalism requires religious imagination grounded in Jewish, Christian, and black feminist and womanist religio-cultural perspectives. Day envisions local beloved communities as the crux of a new global order. This book can be used in both seminary classrooms and doctoral seminars because Day expertly uses theories and cultural artifacts to craft religious ethical reflection that informs and inspires us to flourish as moral agents and communities in the twenty-first century.' - Marcia Y. Riggs, J. Erskine Love Professor of Christian Ethics, Columbia Theological Seminary, USA

'Keri Day insightfully probes the role of religion in neoliberalism, incorporating a fresh, exciting, politicized understanding of the erotic. Trenchant critiques of neoliberalism foreground some of the most socioeconomically vulnerable populations. US womanist and black feminist ideas alongside European theorists productively aid Day's re-envisioning of human flourishing in economic life. Concrete examples and clarity of writing make this a great text for the classroom.' - Traci C. West, Professor of Ethics and African American Studies, Drew University Theological School, USA 'Day argues persuasively that an appropriate response to neoliberalism requires religious imagination grounded in Jewish, Christian, and black feminist and womanist religio-cultural perspectives. Day envisions local beloved communities as the crux of a new global order. This book can be used in both seminary classrooms and doctoral seminars because Day expertly uses theories and cultural artifacts to craft religious ethical reflection that informs and inspires us to flourish as moral agents and communities in the twenty-first century.' - Marcia Y. Riggs, J. Erskine Love Professor of Christian Ethics, Columbia Theological Seminary, USA This study is a comprehensive critique of Western Neoliberalism. The critique utilizes a religious ethical analysis which proceeds as follows: Introduction: This introduction is a clear description of what the book is about and how the analysis and arguments proceed. A rigorous critique of neoliberalism is given starting with a definition of it as an immoral cultural way of life. This definition requires that neoliberalism not be understood simply as a product of the market, or modern politics, or science. Neoliberalism's moral deformations to human flourishing are all laid out; rampant consumerism, empty atomistic individualism, institutional violence towards marginal people, the systemic degradation of the earth and the sheer lack of vision. She makes a strong argument that a just, participatory and sustainable society cannot be generated by neoliberalism and that it has no satisfactory teleology. The critique is insightful; what is lacking is a historical explanation of where neoliberalism came from and how it came to dominate modern society. The writer simply assumes that readers will know how neoliberalism came to dominate our world culture. A short historical explanation of neoliberalism would be very useful as it would also support the analysis of the book and its suggested techniques for resistance. The primary points of the book are detailed in each succeeding chapter. Chapter one seeks to dispel the myth of progress which is characterized as the primary justification for the unquestioning reliance on neoliberalism. -----Neoliberalism hides its oppressions and failures and unrelentingly insists that things are getting better for all. She persuasively demonstrates that such representations are false and that the horrors of the past, must be resurrected in sacred memory so that the destroyed hopes and silenced voices get revisited and rehabilitated. This is a necessary step in challenging the status quo and in recharging oppressed people to continue to resist. Her examination of Benjamin's work and Zizek's show she is able to utilize new and older sources in making her case. She also brings womanist critiques to expose the fictions of neoliberalism. These voices delve into the particulars; racism, environmental, economic and gender issues. Her review of sex trafficking in the Dominican Republic is very moving and insightful as to how desperate people seek betterment under harsh conditions by utilizing their bodies and their agency to scratch out a better future. This is a strong chapter in that it demonstrates clearly the dead end of trying to flourish within neoliberalism. Chapter two argues that we individually must be transformed in order to come together to resist neoliberalism's strongest and most empty gambit-the acquiring mode. It further lays out a plausible alternative way of being and doing. She skillfully uses Kierkegaard's critique of capitalism in his two ideas - of money as abstraction and the transformative power of religious inwardness. She also establishes that though her critique is religious, the primary moral mover is not the Divine, but the oppressed and allies. Still she presents a realized teleology that has room for a variety of religious sources and moral agents. Again womanist voices (Cannon in particular) are brought in to show the difficulty and rewards of forging a unified self-bent on self-actualization, rather than mere self-gratification. It is this new self that is able to reach out to others, to sacrifice and suffer for a new common good. She also clarifies for the reader that religious does not mean Christian, or even organized groups. The new self is one who can bear witness to the truth in ways that bring people together to reject being mere bit players in neoliberalism's march to nowhere. Chapter three is a corrective to the abandonment of the 'erotic' by neoliberalism as well as its distorted recasting as the pornographic. It is further argued that the power of the erotic to reconnect and reenergize people is necessary for the transformation of the self and a beloved community. This chapter has interesting material on the interrelatedness of differing concepts of love, i.e., agape, philia and eros, but its argument is less convincing in that the source materials do not persuade that it is the erotic that powers people to resist the demonic and this impression is strengthened by reading the sixth chapter in which the primary moral agents, the Madres de la Plaza Mayo act vigorously, and effectively precisely because they sublimate eros understandings of love in favor of agape ones. Chapter four argues that the necessary revolutionary practice is a politics of affect which is powered by love. This neighbor love is cast as praxis. This is the power to transform our alienated and disempowered selves into creators of an alternate way of life. This is the best chapter as it clarifies how emotions individually and corporately act to effect social change. She shows how love charges and commits people to fighting for change. She also shows how love can overcome the natural sociological tendency for people to care for their group, or for those that look like them. It is in this chapter that love is able to both retrieve the horrors of past oppressions and represent them in ways that suggest both an alternative past and hence alternatives in the present and the future. Chapter five continues to explain the power of love and how it can generate and sustain a praxis of hope that can make systemic change possible. The praxis in question is the praxis of neighbor love that both rejects neoliberalism while simultaneously striving for the 'beloved community.' It is in this chapter that she shows how some of the newer virtues developed by religious inwardness and womanist experiences act for others who are also being savaged by capitalism, sexism, racism and other oppressions such that a new community of solidarity and resistance comes into being. Chapter six details how new beloved communities can both reject and resist neoliberalism while also creating locally and beyond alternative ways of being in solidarity that promote caring, responsibility and building a new society open to all. She makes this argument through a case study of the Madres de los Desaparacidos (The mothers of the disappeared ones) who challenge and disestablish the military junta that has taken over Argentina. Their non-violent resistance to state violence and their acceptance of the rejection of many of their fellow citizens demonstrates their unstoppable will to redeem the past and in doing so creating a new present with the hope of a new more just and egalitarian future. In this chapter all of her arguments are revisited in a convincing fashion that strongly suggests that resisting neoliberalism is everyone's responsibility, is demanded by justice and can provide all of us with a moral task that is possible as well as compelling. The reader is presented with a strong, well-constructed critique of what is wrong in our modern world and how we can strive with others to make it better. This material is original, complex, and addresses the heart of our most stressful problem. In a world in which the environment is failing, violence, international and domestic is increasing, the distribution of wealth and privileges are ever more skewed, and she suggests how we can sustain a plausible, hopeful, fulfilling life together. Her work engages recent scholarship and pushes it forward in that she does not make the mistake of privileging exclusively any moral sources but pragmatically and insightfully utilizes a wide variety of resources to both critique the problem and construct an ameliorating praxis. This work helps to break up the endless deadlock in ethical arguments that seems to prevail currently. The weakness in the book is that some of the references like Klee's painting are too difficult to grasp by mere written description. This fault could be cured by providing the reader with a picture of that work. Some more work needs to be done on how the erotic helps to drive her argument. In addition, some of the self-actualization described there seems to be an aspect of neoliberalism itself. More importantly, she never convincingly demonstrates how that form of love fits in a beloved community where erotic love has already be defamed as pornography, particularly with reference to people of color. Still this is an important book that has already begun to change how I am writing on ethics and public policy. This author (who just received tenure) is suitably qualified to write on this subject and some of the material has been recently published in article form in a highly respected academic journal. Since this book is interdisciplinary in its sources and source material and looks at an international phenomenon, I would think that it should appeal to many Western readers who are perplexed with the problems of neoliberalism. Most other titles in the field have the problem of being much more narrow, almost in silos as they look only at capitalism, or environmental degradation, or limited, almost tribal resources-womanism only, for instance. I recommend that this book be published. It has a fresh new approach and it is scholarly and engaging.

Author Information

Keri Day is Associate Professor of Theological and Social Ethics and Director of Black Church Studies at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, USA. Her previous publication includes Unfinished Business: Black Women, The Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America (2012).

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