neoliberalism
Simon During proposes to unravel the “layered” history of postmodernism in New Zealand. In so doing, the author of this essay treats postmodernism as “an event rather than a period” and describes postmodernism’s development in the epoch of neo-liberalism.
In this essay, Davin Heckman argues that works of electronic literature often provide occasions for cultivating attention in a mutable cultural landscape. Through readings of John Cayley, YHCHI, Rob Wittig, and Richard Holeton, Heckman points to a poetics of technical estrangement by which new media is opened up to deliberative reading, and thus presents contemporary readers with the opportunity to develop critical practices appropriate for the conditions of neoliberalism.
Jokes play a fundamental role in Slavoj Žižek's philosophizing. Is Žižek joking when he extols the virtues of Christianity to the Left? Eric Dean Rasmussen analyzes Žižek's pro-Christian proselytizing as attacks on modes of PC-ness - political correctness and perverse Christianity - that sustain an undesirable neoliberalism.
Citing the narrator's radical ambivalence about time, history, and the flesh, Maureen Curtin argues that American Genius, A Comedy represents the hysteria of the contemporary "post-political" moment.
Katie King on the challenges and rewards, in her own life and the lives of her students, that emerge when writing about personal encounters with technology.
Julie Cupples reviews a retrospective collection of essays by Chandra Mohanty on the geopolitics of gender and race.