Prefigurative Neoliberalism: A Provisional Analysis of the Global Sovereign Citizen Movement

ABSTRACT Much contemporary research on prefigurative legality turns to left‐leaning activists for ethnographic insights into practices that call forward an alternative legal world. We turn instead to a right‐leaning movement commonly known by scholars as the Pseudolaw movement—or self‐named (by some involved) as the sovereign citizen movement—filled with loosely affiliated groups that share a common ideological approach to law. We discuss the underlying logics motivating sovereign citizens' practices, discussing how a nostalgically based form of prefiguration shapes sovereign citizens' responses to contemporary neoliberal dilemmas. We then compare this right‐leaning movement's approach to prefigurative legality with the approach of left‐leaning activists.