Neoliberalisms: Essays on Contemporary US Culture and Politics
The editor of a proposed collection on neoliberalism and the
United States invites submissions on any aspect of contemporary
culture and politics relevant to this important contemporary
problematic. Please read the brief prospectus that follows for
a project rationale and a list of possible topics.
The collection draws on an American Studies Association Convention
panel convenved in 1999. Two of the participants on that panel,
Eric Lott and Christopher Newfield, have already agreed to be
part of this book project. A major university press has expressed
interest in publishing the anthology.
If you are interested in contributing to this proposed collection,
please send a substantial abstract (500 to 750 words) and c.v.
to the following address by October 15th, 2001.
Harilaos Stecopoulos
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of English
308 English Philosophy Building
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242-1492
Prospectus
Despite the appearance of new work on the culture of neoliberalism
in the United States (e.g., Thomas Frank and Chris Newfield on
corporate culture, Roman de la Campa and John Frow on late capitalism
and cultural studies, Eric Lott on boomer liberalism, Adolph
Reed on Clinton and race) the vast majority of scholarship on
neoliberal phenomena tends to focus on the relationship between
developing nations and the economic policies of the World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
(Consider, for example, the emphatically transnational issue
of _Public Culture_ entitled "Millennial Capitalism and the Culture
of Neoliberalism.") To be sure, there are good reasons for scholarly
interest in the impact of neoliberalism on developing countries.
The inhumane policies of the IMF and the World Bank have decimated
the economies of such nations as Mexico and Brazil and the resulting
social wreckage has inspired social scientists to analyze the
international consequences of free market ideology run amok.
And, as recent work on the Mexican situation has demonstrated,
informed scholarship can play an important role in both assessing
and combating the effects of late capitalist doctrine on poor
communities throughout the world.
Yet scholars should also pay close attention to the way neoliberalism
pervades the far more affluent US culture and society. Beginning
with the Reagan Era, we have witnessed the destruction of the
welfare state, the creation of a prison-industrial complex, the
unjust deployment of the military throughout the world, and
the steady commercialization of many spheres of public life.
For Americanists to ignore the power of neoliberalism in the
contemporary United States is only to perpetuate the idea that
free markets and consumerism are the guarantors of most types
of freedom, that privatization is more efficient that public
administration, and that egalitarian utopias are absurd fantasies.
Moreover, such domestic developments both reflect and produce
the effects of neoliberalism abroad. As Noam Chomsky has recently
reminded us in _Profit over People_, the US government and its
corporate allies are the principle architects of the very "Washington
consensus" that oppresses developing nations. Focusing on seemingly
domestic phenomena may help us understand how US cultural and
intellectual discourses underwrite the belief that the post-industrial
West can teach the rest of the world how to create thriving economies,
generate more inclusive political institutions, and learn to
tolerate difference.
What I am after, in effect, is a collection that addresses
the cultural politics of neoliberalism at a point whenthe cold
war is over, the welfare state is largely dismantled, corporations
have extraordinary power, information defines the economy, and
some form of a "third way" seems to have considerable appeal
both at home and abroad. I am interested in work on openly conservative
culture and neoliberalism (e.g., the connection between various
forms of Christian fundamentalism and free market beliefs), but
I am particularly excited by examinations of the insidious conjunction
of (seemingly) progressive politics and neoliberal agendas. Some
recent forms of neoliberal culture worthy of analysis would include:
multiculturalism and global corporate culture, the emergence
"boomer liberalism" during the Clinton years (from Greil Marcus's
recent work to Tim Robbins' neo-Popular Front films to the revival
of the VW Bug) the role of human rights culture in structuring
US foreign policy (Haiti, Kosovo, the commemoration of WWII),
the cultural politics of the anti-tobacco campaigns (from the
Joe Camel furor to _The Insider_), the so-called "California
ideology" (hippie culture meets free market technophilia) before
and after the economic downturn. One must add to this list the
emergence of a "compassionate" Republicanism exemplified by
such fascinating political moments as the invocation of Dorothy
Day in a recent Presidential speech and the presence of Ted Kennedy
at a White House screening of _Thirteen Days_.
At the same time, no survey of potential engagements
with the challenge of neoliberalism would be complete without
some brief consideration of those Americans who work assiduously
to oppose it at home and around the world. Work is still needed
on the Los Angeles insurgents of May 1992, on US labor in the
age of John Sweeney, on environmental activist groups such as
the Ruckus Society and Earth First, on the growing living wage
movement and on radical academic culture. Moreover, Americanists
need to examine how these domestic anti-neoliberal cultures interact
with the growing anti-neoliberal movement around the world. For
example, how might we articulate connections between the Los
Angeles insurgents and the Zapatistas, the striking French workers
and the Ruckus Society, the living wage campaign and the international
movement for debt relief? To focus on the culture of neoliberalism
in the United States by no means excuses us from considering
the complex connections between domestic and international cultures
of resistance.
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing any of us working on neoliberalism
is the question of whether or not we should try to appropriate
those elements of the classic liberal heritage that may prove
useful in critiquing and undermining the totemic power of the
free market in the United States. In "Liberalism and the Cultural
Studies Imagination," Michael Warner urges left critics of neoliberalism
to take up this problem and use what they can of the Enlightenment
legacy to imagine new forms of human possibility and liberation.
Warner's salutary piece asks us to confront some difficult questions:
Is it possible for a new type of liberalism to stimulate the
emergence of new radicalism? Should such a liberalism be engineered
or shaped by "lefty" cultural policy types (what we might call
the Australian strategy)? Or should new forms of liberalism emerge
in a more organic and less statist manner from grassroots organizations
and liberal corporate cultural producers? Does liberalism as
we typically understand it still signify in an age of neoliberalism?
And if so, should we look to the liberal tradition as a source
of new ideas during the twenty-first century? In taking up these
questions, "Neoliberalisms" aims to intervene in the ongoing
debate about radical democracy at home and abroad.
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