Potentiality and Adaptability: Neoliberalism and Italian Thought

Neoliberalism exercises its art of government on forms of life by turning human potentiality into adaptability. According to one of its most influential thinkers, Friedrich von Hayek, the market’s spontaneous order requires the constant adaptation of individuals to circumstances that no one can be aware of and that no one can master. To achieve this, the human-animal’s anthropological plasticity must be reduced to mere flexibility vis-à-vis market conditions. However, this adaptability – which could correspond to a specific negative philosophical anthropology – is the reverse side of the ‘potentiality as such’ theorised – albeit in different ways – by authors of Italian Theory like Agamben, Negri, Virno, and Esposito. This article aims to cast into relief the conditions needed to prevent such conversion of potentiality into adaptability.