Neoliberalism as a political theology of chance: the politics of divination

In this essay I argue that despite its increasingly catastrophic social and natural consequences, neoliberalism retains its ideological appeal partly due to the way collective faith in market forces validates neoliberal ideology as a disavowed form of divination.1 I begin by briefly canvassing both the history and persistence of divination practices. I then read neoliberal views of random market forces as productive of “knowledge” as a contemporary form of divination practice, defined as any tradition-bound practice of taking chance seriously as a conduit for more-than-human knowledge. I follow Philip Mirowski’s argument that under neoliberalism markets are understood primarily as superhuman “meta-information processors” which, partly based on randomness, produce correct “knowledge” about the social good in the form of prices. I argue that the way this chance emergence of “knowledge” is conflated with human freedom, particularly in the writings of Friedrich Hayek, is an uncanny parallel to the divinatory solicitation of chance. Markets themselves are isomorphic with perennial divination tools. Part of the effort to undermine and displace the neoliberal era must involve dismantling the appeal of its particular form of divination, a complex task (not undertaken here) involving exposure of the way neoliberalism offers a simplification of, and authoritarian solution for, complex problems posed by the role of chance in politics, science and metaphysics. This article is published as part of a thematic collection dedicated to radical theologies.