Neoliberal subject formation in posttransitional Cambodia has been facilitated through the ‘commonsense’ rhetoric of good governance, which is conceived here as a primary discursive formation in the creation of consent for neoliberalism. Neoliberal subjectivation is the process whereby one memorizes the truth claims that one has heard and converts them into rules of conduct, thereby effectively locking in the rights of capital. As disciplinary rationalities, strategies, technologies, and techniques coagulate under neoliberal subjectivation in contemporary Cambodian society through the proliferation of particular discursive formations like good governance, the structural inequalities of capital are increasingly misrecognized. This constitutes symbolic violence, which is wielded precisely inasmuch as one does not perceive it as such. How we interpret the fluidity between those who produce and those constrained by neoliberal discursive formations is paramount if we are to counter problematic notions of neoliberalism as inevitable or monolithic and begin to recognize the systemic violent geographies that neoliberalism (re)produces both in posttransitional Cambodia and beyond.
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