The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy - Hardcover

Lisa Duggan

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361 ratings by Goodreads

9780807079447: The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807079448 ISBN 13: 9780807079447

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 2003

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We’ve now all heard about the shocking redistribution of wealth—to the rich—that’s occurred during the last thirty years, and particularly during the last decade. But economic changes like this don’t occur in a vacuum; they’re always linked to politics, to ideas about things like the proper role of government, what is natural and unnatural, good and bad, and what we imagine for our country and ourselves.

The Twilight of Equality searches out these links through an analysis of the politics of the 1990s, the decade when neoliberalism—free market economics—became gospel. Through a series of political case studies, Duggan shows how neoliberal goals have been pursued through racial codes, populist campaigns, culture wars, and sex panics–demonstrating conclusively that progressive arguments that separate identity politics and economic policy, cultural politics and affairs of state, can only fail.

This is a book for intellectuals and activists, gay and straight, interested in how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have functioned and seeking a way to revitalize and unify progressive politics in the U.S. today.

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About the Author:

Lisa Duggan is associate professor of American studies and history at New York University.

From Publishers Weekly:

Sometime during the 1990s, conservative Republicans adopted the rhetoric of multiculturalism, liberal Democrats announced the end of welfare and thus, neoliberalism was born. Duggan, a professor of American studies and history at New York University, offers a thoughtful study of how ongoing, bipartisan sponsorship of free market economics has eclipsed social democracy and culture over the past 20 years. But neoliberalism's most insidious characteristic, argues Duggan (Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity), is its wolf-in-sheep's-clothing claim of multicultural neutrality, purporting to isolate the "natural" processes of capitalism from sticky issues of class, race and identity. President Clinton, for instance, publicly supported antiracist, inclusionary policy while simultaneously pushing through NAFTA-legislation that promoted, according to Duggan, the inherently racist, classist structures of global capitalism. In a provocative case study, the author examines the way conservative Republicans clamped down on a women's studies conference at SUNY New Paltz, threatening academic freedom with a battle cry for family values. Duggan sees this incident as part of a larger neoliberal project to erode and marginalize "downwardly distributive" social movements like feminism and civil rights that threaten the current social order. The result is a dangerous schism of leftist concerns: gay activists currently embrace a more mainstream direction instead of trying to disrupt the status quo, while NARAL focuses exclusively on abortion rights, ignoring the larger context of social, political, economic and cultural inequality. Duggan's well-reasoned argument is that true progressive change must occur not in parts but as a unified whole.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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