State of insecurity: Government of the precarious
From the review by Ana Vujanović: The political theorist Isabell Lorey has appeared as one of the most striking European voices in the recent debate on precarity and precarization in neoliberalism. Her theoretical discourse draws from the referential frameworks of political and biopolitical theory, feminism, gender and postcolonial studies, as well as of recent social and political movements, such as Euromayday, Occupy and 15-M. This invigorating and politically sharp intersection has created a potent critical platform for analyzing representative democracy, biopolitical governmentality, immunization, and precarization, which belong to Lorey's main concerns. Isabell Lorey is particularly concerned with the neoliberal “state of insecurity” and how it relates to the process of precarization. In fact, although the book is entitled State of Insecurity, it could also be considered a sequel of Lorey’s long-term research on precarity, a sequel that focuses on how precarization is immersed in neoliberal government of and by insecurity. The line that opens the book reads: “If we fail to understand precarization, then we understand neither the politics nor the economy of the present."