Hans Blumenberg and Feminism

The German philosopher Hans Blumenberg [1920-1996] was interested in feminist issues during the last two decades of his life as shown their dedication and effort in compiling selected cuts in the media related to the topic of women and their development of multiple short essays inspired by the latter and countless curious anecdotes. Hans Blumenberg and feminism seeks to inform the reader about the existence of a blumenberguian thought line of research totally unexplored so far. It can only be revealed through the study of the philosopher ‘Nachlaβ’ found in the Deutsches literaturarchiv Marbach (Stuttgart) which I personally had a chance to dig through the award of a research grant from the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Dienst Austage).

Neoliberalism as an ideology

In order to examine whether the usual identification of neoliberal ideas with an ideological discourse is valid, this paper starts off with an analysis of what Marx terms commodity fetishism in Capital, based on which a certain sense of the concept of ideology may be inferred which would result in its being both true and false. In order to determine whether this definition of ideology may be applied to neoliberal theory, we look at its fundamental features and how they continue with or break away from economic liberalism as studied in Michel Foucault’s Birth of biopolitics. Attention is later moved to the characteristics detected by David Harvey in the socalled flexible accumulation as the latest stage of capitalism which coincides with the political implementation of neoliberal doctrine. At the end of the road travelled, it is hypothesised that this theory would be a form of ideology containing a dimension of both truth and falsehood, in line with Marx’s thought.