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Adapt!: On a New Political Imperative
Winner, French Voices Award
This book, a crossover hit in France, offers a fresh genealogy of our neoliberal moment.
“We must adapt!” These words can be heard almost everywhere and in every aspect of our lives. Where does this widespread sense that we have fallen behind come from? How can we explain this progressive colonization of the economic, social, and political fields by this biological vocabulary of evolution? Offering a lucid account of sophisticated material, Barbara Stiegler uncovers the prehistories of today’s ubiquitous rhetoric in Darwinism and American liberalism, while, at the same time, recovering powerful resistances to the rhetoric of adaptation across the twentieth century.
Walter Lippmann, an American theorist of this new liberalism, believed democracy was not adapted to the needs of globalization. Only a government of experts could force society to evolve, he argued. Lippmann thus found himself confronted with John Dewey, the great figure of American Pragmatism. Both Lippmann and Dewey labored under the impression that the world had changed and society needed to adapt. However, Lippmann did not trust society to adapt on its own and insisted on the need for experts who would force the necessary adaptation. Dewey, by contrast, believed the necessary adaptation could only come "from below" and should proceed in a democratic fashion.
Focusing on readings of Michel Foucault, Walter Lippmann, and John Dewey, Adapt! paves the way for renewed insights into neoliberalism’s history, essence, characteristic forces, and impacts, as well as biopolitical theory. Stiegler presents an intriguing new genealogy for the development of neoliberalism, examining whether humans are by nature lagging and require biopolitical and disciplinary management to enforce adaptation. Stiegler also reorients Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism by emphasizing the Darwinian rhetoric of adaptation, as it arose in the Lippmann–Dewey Debate, and deftly handles the question of human nature in a way that re-enlivens this traditional concept.
As the industrialization of our ways of life never stops destroying the environment and the health of organisms (climate disruption, the destruction of biodiversity, the growth of chronic diseases, the return of large pandemics), how can we think of a democratic government of life and the living? This is the question that Stiegler’s work helps us to confront.
This book, a crossover hit in France, offers a fresh genealogy of our neoliberal moment.
“We must adapt!” These words can be heard almost everywhere and in every aspect of our lives. Where does this widespread sense that we have fallen behind come from? How can we explain this progressive colonization of the economic, social, and political fields by this biological vocabulary of evolution? Offering a lucid account of sophisticated material, Barbara Stiegler uncovers the prehistories of today’s ubiquitous rhetoric in Darwinism and American liberalism, while, at the same time, recovering powerful resistances to the rhetoric of adaptation across the twentieth century.
Walter Lippmann, an American theorist of this new liberalism, believed democracy was not adapted to the needs of globalization. Only a government of experts could force society to evolve, he argued. Lippmann thus found himself confronted with John Dewey, the great figure of American Pragmatism. Both Lippmann and Dewey labored under the impression that the world had changed and society needed to adapt. However, Lippmann did not trust society to adapt on its own and insisted on the need for experts who would force the necessary adaptation. Dewey, by contrast, believed the necessary adaptation could only come "from below" and should proceed in a democratic fashion.
Focusing on readings of Michel Foucault, Walter Lippmann, and John Dewey, Adapt! paves the way for renewed insights into neoliberalism’s history, essence, characteristic forces, and impacts, as well as biopolitical theory. Stiegler presents an intriguing new genealogy for the development of neoliberalism, examining whether humans are by nature lagging and require biopolitical and disciplinary management to enforce adaptation. Stiegler also reorients Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism by emphasizing the Darwinian rhetoric of adaptation, as it arose in the Lippmann–Dewey Debate, and deftly handles the question of human nature in a way that re-enlivens this traditional concept.
As the industrialization of our ways of life never stops destroying the environment and the health of organisms (climate disruption, the destruction of biodiversity, the growth of chronic diseases, the return of large pandemics), how can we think of a democratic government of life and the living? This is the question that Stiegler’s work helps us to confront.
208 pages, Paperback
Published May 17, 2022
11 people are currently reading
257 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Stiegler
14 books15 followersFrench philosopher, professor and author born in 1971.
Librarian note: There is at least one more author with this name in this data base.
Librarian note: There is at least one more author with this name in this data base.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 1, 2025
Bárbara Stiegler dice que en este libro emprende una nueva genealogía (nietzscheano-foucaultiana) del neoliberalismo. No estoy tan convencido. Lo que sin duda hace es abrir una investigación sobre una tradición poco estudiada que impulsó a esta corriente política: sus contactos con la teoría darwiniana y la lectura que hizo de ellos Walter Lippmann, así como el debate sostenido por este y John Dewey.
"Hay que adaptarse" es una excelente síntesis de esta teoría y este debate. Lo presenta en forma profunda, analizando las consecuencias filosóficas, científicas y políticas de sus distintas postulaciones. El aporte que hace, en este sentido, a un entendimiento más claro del neoliberalismo.
Al mismo tiempo, es un estudio preliminar. Stiegler anuncia en las últimas páginas precisamente aquello que falta: una investigación que se ocupe de ver el modo en que esta teoría incidió sobre el neoliberalismo realmente existente... si lo hizo. No se puede negar que la especificidad del libro, que se enfoca en básicamente un autor y un debate, es un factor positivo, que lo destaca de trabajos comparables (pienso en Connolly o Morton) que pecan de demasiado abarcativos. Sin embargo, siento que habría sido posible incorporar alguna noción más precisa sobre esta articulación política de la teoría de Lippmann.
"Hay que adaptarse" es una excelente síntesis de esta teoría y este debate. Lo presenta en forma profunda, analizando las consecuencias filosóficas, científicas y políticas de sus distintas postulaciones. El aporte que hace, en este sentido, a un entendimiento más claro del neoliberalismo.
Al mismo tiempo, es un estudio preliminar. Stiegler anuncia en las últimas páginas precisamente aquello que falta: una investigación que se ocupe de ver el modo en que esta teoría incidió sobre el neoliberalismo realmente existente... si lo hizo. No se puede negar que la especificidad del libro, que se enfoca en básicamente un autor y un debate, es un factor positivo, que lo destaca de trabajos comparables (pienso en Connolly o Morton) que pecan de demasiado abarcativos. Sin embargo, siento que habría sido posible incorporar alguna noción más precisa sobre esta articulación política de la teoría de Lippmann.
February 17, 2022
Généalogie du sentiment de retard que nous éprouvons. Barbara Stiegler nous plonge dans une étude des thèses de Walter Lippman et John Dewey pour penser le néolibéralisme à travers le lexique biologique de l'évolution.
La lecture parait donc plutôt ardue, notamment par le lexique biologique et les références précises concernant le néolibéralisme et les thèses des deux auteurs.
La lecture parait donc plutôt ardue, notamment par le lexique biologique et les références précises concernant le néolibéralisme et les thèses des deux auteurs.
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August 25, 2021Clairement, je n'étais pas la cible pour cet essai ! :D
April 11, 2024
Il faut lire Barbara Stiegler !
December 1, 2023
barbara mv
January 26, 2024
Excellent essay by my former professor from the University of Bordeaux, that describes the ideological origins of neoliberalism and the political consequences of its generalization.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews