Ontology of language, a new device for the construction of the neoliberal subject?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze critically the implications of language ontology and transformational learning for education and social order reproduction. The hypothesis supports that these formulations can be understood as a new device of neoliberal subjectivation that internalizes the notion of performance based on linguistic reductionism. The criticism is incribed in the debate on the construction processes of neoliberal subjectivity and collective action. The foundational premises of language ontology are contrasted with critical learning experiences of Chilean militants university students and with educational experiences developed by the Landless Rural Workers movement in Brazil. The results show that is experiencing a process of intensification of a new dominant rationality, which is necessary to justify the transformations of contemporary capitalism in all the orders of human existence. We conclude that the ontology of language means, in short, the internalization of the logic of the market in the constitution of being-in-competition, which seeks to reproduce the neoliberal ideology. It is observed that the new interpretation of the human being and the world proclaimed by the ontology of language, denies the world itself on which this notion is based, considering the individual as the central value of society and language as the source of its transformation. In this way, a postmodern relativist ideology is promoted that finds in the subjective —and its transformation potential— a new technology of the self to consolidate the notion of the individual-company. It is concluded that the ontology of language means, in short, the internalization of the logic of the market in the constitution of being-incompetition, which seeks to reproduce the neoliberal ideology.