This chapter looks more in depth at how economic discourses of globalization are catalyzing popular desires for political authoritarianism. Specifically, it contends that the portrayal of corporate globalization as “inevitable” and “necessary” creates an intensified desire for individual and collective sovereignty. Rather than simply be a “subjectless” part of the inexorable and unavoidable spread of an international financial regime, people affectively embrace their right and ability to shape this process to their own advantage – to be, in this sense, a subject of globalization instead of merely being subjected to it. As will be shown, this fantasy of sovereignty associated with globalization is quite conducive to conventional authoritarianism, and ironically serves to provide a popular legitimacy to capitalism’s ongoing structural necessity of a regulative state for its survival and growth.
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Front Matter
