The socio-political formation widely referred to as neoliberalism has seen a particular model of freedom – free markets, property rights, and entrepreneurial self-ownership – gain prominence in a variety of ways around the globe. The surge over recent years in critical activity around neoliberalism has resulted in an increasingly settled understanding of its political, economic, and cultural mechanics. Most critiques, however, have proven reluctant to engage neoliberalism on the territory that it has conspicuously made its own: namely, freedom. As David Harvey (2005: 183) writes in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, ‘What is so astonishing about the impoverished condition of contemporary public discourse … is the lack of any serious debate as to which of several divergent concepts of freedom might be appropriate to our times’. Freedom After Neoliberalism aims to stimulate such a debate. By addressing the representation of freedom in cultural texts produced and received in a range of local, national, and global contexts, the collection proposes to rethink the many meanings of freedom beyond its conception in neoliberal theory and practice, and sets out to imagine what freedom might look like in a world beyond neoliberalism.

This Special Collection is edited by Alexander Beaumont (York St John University) and Adam Kelly (York University).


Freedom After Neoliberalism

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Special Collections