Race and the logic of radicalisation under neoliberalism

I argue in this paper that race - reconceptualised against the postracial logic of racial neoliberalism as a material relationship rather than simply an identity - functions within the logic of radicalisation in Australian antiterrorism to produce the conditions necessary for the reproduction of neoliberal capitalism. Taking theoretical cues from the arguments of David Theo Goldberg and Stuart Hall, I argue that the logic of radicalisation within this process mobilises the raced spectral figure of the essentially violent, extremist Muslim/Arab ‘Other’ to two key ends: first, the invisibilisation of the political motivations and grievances underpinning the actions of those who commit terrorist violence; second, the reproduction of neoliberal capitalism through the fashioning of neoliberal subjectivities, the salving of collective anxieties at the effects of neoliberal restructuring via ‘authoritarian populism’, and the innovation of new and augmentation of existing opportunities for profit and accumulation.