Abstract
Response to Hila Keren, Divided and Conquered: The Neoliberal Roots and Emotional Consequences of the Arbitration Revolution
It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to reflect on Professor Hila Keren’s article, “Divided and Conquered: The Neoliberal Roots and Emotional Consequences of the Arbitration Revolution.” This extraordinary piece reads less like a law review article than an artfully crafted detective story, meticulously following the doctrinal and sociopolitical clues to answer such questions as, “whatever happened to collective legal action?” or “why has advent of arbitration, in fact, become a ‘revolution’?” With a masterful command of several related fields, Professor Keren weaves together a complex doctrinal account of this “revolution,” situates it in a larger sociopolitical context, and traces its corrosive emotional effects on those it dispossesses and isolates. Particularly riveting are her intertwined doctrinal narratives of the arbitration story and the “separation” story, and her description of neoliberalism not simply as an account of economic relations—fostered by actors as diverse as the Koch brothers, the Federalist Society, and burgeoning industry of self-improvement—as a vehicle for economizing and project-ifying the self.
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