DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20448185
Neoliberalism, Subjectivity, and Social Movements in Latin America: from Resistance to Power and its Limits
by Nicolás Alberto López Pérez
and Daniel Ricardo Cujabán Artunduaga
This article analyses the impact of neoliberalism as both an economic rationality and a subjectivizing apparatus within the educational systems and social movements of Chile and Colombia. Through a critical review of the reforms promoted by supranational organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), it explores how these policies reshaped the role of the State, privatized fundamental social rights – such as education – and molded new forms of subjectivity centered on the individual as human capital. In response to these transformations, resistance emerged through so-called “new social movements”, particularly the student movement, which in both countries played a crucial role in articulating intersectional demands and denouncing the social consequences of the neoliberal model. The article traces the trajectory of these movements up to the social uprisings of 2019 and examines their ambivalent relationship with the subsequent progressive governments. From a critical perspective, it questions whether these experiences represent a true overcoming of the neoliberal paradigm or rather its reconfiguration within new institutional forms. The analysis is grounded in an interdisciplinary framework that draws on political theory, sociology, and critical education studies.
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