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as defective.

      In order to analyse said systemic inconsistencies, immanent criticism always relies on a theoretical framework necessary for illuminating the immanent contradictions of the respective object of critique. This theoretical framework is needed to trace the connections between two seemingly unrelated phenomena, which – upon closer inspection – are co-dependant and arise out of the same structures. As has already been mentioned, capitalism’s destructive attitude towards families and its simultaneous reliance on family structures to produce future workers and to create and maintain a recreative safe place for stressed workers to relax is a case in point (Fisher 32f.). Another is neoliberalism’s claim to be the system which produces most freedom for everyone. The free market stylises itself to be the one social order, which has fulfilled the promises of civilisation, having created free individuals that answer to no higher authority than to themselves (cf. Shonkwiler and La Berge 4f.). Shunning any form of coercion and force (e.g. in the shape of enforced labour, cf. Dörre 23),1 neoliberalism seems to achieve freedom to its “highest possible extent” (E. Olin Wright 50). As Serena Olsaretti paraphrases the advocates of the free market, “since the free market hosts only mutually advantageous and therefore non-coercive transactions, it is a realm in which freedom and voluntariness alike are respected” (141f.). Consequently, as Johansen and Karl argue, neoliberalist thought claims to achieve as much ‘freedom’ for the individual as possible:

      [N]eoliberalism [is] an economic dogma and political rationale that holds that free markets and competition will produce the best outcomes for the most people. This tenet often presumes and produces scenarios of radical individualism and self-proprietorship that are predicated upon this competitive ethos. (3)

      In sum, neoliberalist rhetoric “with its foundational emphasis upon individual freedoms” (Harvey, Neoliberalism 41) uses freedom as key terminology, advocating neoliberalism as the prime engine of individual freedom and responsibility. The “assumption that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market and of trade is a cardinal feature of neoliberal thinking” (ibid. 7), seemingly making the system more appealing. As Zygmunt Bauman writes, the individual is made “responsible for his or her actions” (Freedom 3) in modern Western free market capitalism, resulting in the individual obtaining “the whole and undivided responsibility for the action” (ibid. 2f.). Indeed, the very name “free market” conjures associations with opportunity, choice, and free will, culminating in the claim that “the market implies not compulsion but freedom” (Wood, Origin 6). This notion of neoliberal capitalism, as the “guardian of liberty” (Metcalf) or as “perfection of freedom” (ibid. 16), is based on a process that Stuart Hall and Alan O’Shea have termed “individualisation of everyone” (12).

      Although advocates of neoliberalism argue that everyone “who lives in [a] neoliberal society is free to determine their fate” (Fevre 13; cf. also Mirowski 100), reality has proven the promises made to be deceptive at best and false at worst. Therefore the discussions around freedom within neoliberalism move centre stage, ever since Karl Marx argued in Das Kapital (1867) that “one of the historical conditions for capital’s eventual hegemony […] is the generalized appearance that market exchange, as a formal and hence non-coercive social mechanism, replaces direct coercive control (founded on religious bond, feudal obligation, or absolutist prerogative)” (Best 505), fostering the illusion of autonomous, ‘free’ individuals. As David Harvey writes, “[p]olitical struggles over the proper conception of rights, and even of freedom itself, move centre-stage in the search for alternatives” to neoliberal capitalism (Neoliberalism 182). Continuing, he states that neoliberalism has put on “a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights” (ibid. 119). These words, however, only “hide the grim realities of the restoration of reconstitution of naked class power” (ibid.) within a neoliberalist context; the critics of neoliberalism indicate that neoliberal individualism “condemns them to less and less freedom, even as common knowledge declares it self-evident that their fates are in their own hands” (Fevre 13f.). Harvey continues by providing examples from Britain and the United States where the neoliberal system is much more prominent than in parts of Europe.

      This obvious paradox (the insistence on freedom, while simultaneously producing conditions that systematically undermine the possibility to lead a free life) is a possible leverage point of immanent criticism. Its argumentative cogency arises from the fact that neoliberalism is a construct full of such inherent contradictions, creating mutually exclusive demands that make it impossible to sustain both at any given time. Immanent criticism is the only form of critique able to visualise the connections between the freedom-focused agenda of neoliberalism and the coercive structures in which individuals find themselves – despite the absence of totalitarian leaders, and without resorting to notions of false consciousness.2 Exemplifying the paradigmatic merit of literature, dystopian fiction in combination with immanent criticism offers a mode of reading that disturbs the common sense offered by neoliberalism. By applying immanent criticism these novels demystify the claims of neoliberalism, showing that this form of life can neither fulfil its promises nor provide a sustainable path for the development of future generations. They thus deconstruct the claims brought forth by neoliberalist advocates, and allow us to see the inherent contradiction within the system. It may pass off as freedom as it seems uncoupled to the juridico-political notion of power, however it produces a yet more complex web of power difficult to define theoretically. In the words of Hannah Arendt, “the rule by nobody is not necessarily no-rule; it may indeed, under certain circumstances, even turn out to be one of its cruellest and most tyrannical versions” (Condition 40).

      Jaeggi maintains that in order to function properly, immanent criticism relies on the support of a theory-based reading of the criticised. In this case, immanent criticism “does not simply extract the ideal from reality [but] combines the idea that the standard of criticism resides in the thing itself with the claim to provide a context-transcending critique” (Critique 191). The theoretical framework promising to be most illustrative in this context is the theory of power developed by David Grewal in his Network Power (2008), an investigation into the nature of power in the 21^st century. This study adds a new layer to the ancient discourse about the characteristics of power, which comes in many guises: the most typical form is what Michel Foucault refers to as “juridico-political model” (cf. Discipline and Punish, 1979). This notion of power as sovereignty dates back to the beginnings of political theory, often associated with Machiavelli, Locke, and Hobbes, who famously identified the Leviathan as the sole pole of power within their respective treatises of political power (cf. King and Kendall 217ff.). This top-down structure conceptualises power as radiating from one centre of (political) authority, and designates power in terms of its influence on others’ behaviour; by way of an example, Agent A imposes her will on Agent B. Foucault correctly asserts that “we have not ceased talking and thinking in terms of [the juridico-political model], [but] we actually live in relations of power that are quite different and that cannot be described properly in its terms” (Grewal 136). In her study How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence (2009), Karen E. Dill argues along the same lines:

      When we think about manipulation, we are likely to think of strong-arm techniques: fascist dictators and terrorists manipulate and they do it with an iron fist. Think George Orwell’s Big Brother. Think of the motto of the Borg on TV’s Star Trek: The Next Generation: ‘Resistance is futile.’ Think Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, or the general view Americans had of Russia in the mid-twentieth century. The idea is that we’ll know when people want to manipulate us because they’ll publicly declare their intention or brag about how we’re powerless against their strength. (25)

      Dill argues that we still think about manipulation and power “similar to how villains operate in the movies, on television and in video games” (ibid.): those exercising power do so according to Foucault’s juridico-political model in terms of oppression, violence, and threat to life and limb. Equally, King and Kendall also consider the Hobbesian notion of sovereign power as “the most fundamental form of power, a notion from which we have (for better or worse) yet to escape” (219). Sovereignty, then, is still the most ‘popular’ concept of power – not only in classical dystopian writing but also in the everyday usage of the term

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