Contemporary World Narrative Fiction and the Spaces of Neoliberalism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Michael K. Walonen

      Pages 1-17

3. Broad Trends

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-20

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   2. Contemporary North American Narrative Fiction and the Landscapes of Neoliberalism: The Explosion of Corporate Capitalism and the Spaces of the Fallen American Middle Class

      • Michael K. Walonen

      Pages 21-44

   3. Speculation, Social Conflict, and the Ethics of Untrammeled Accumulation in the American Neoliberal Financier Novel

      • Michael K. Walonen

      Pages 45-78

   4. Spatial Division, Bricolage Settlement, and Informal Economies in the Developing-World Slum Novel

      • Michael K. Walonen

      Pages 79-103

4. Cases in Point

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 105-105

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   2. Psycho-Geographic Orientation in the Neoliberal City: Establishing and Contesting Place Identity in the Nascent Literature of Dubai

      • Michael K. Walonen

      Pages 107-127

   3. Sense of Place, Consumer Capitalism, and the Sexual Politics of Global Nomadism in the Popular Fiction of Dubai

      • Michael K. Walonen

      Pages 128-150

   4. The Spatial/Political-Economic Dynamics of Theme Parks in Contemporary Transatlantic Fiction

      • Michael K. Walonen

      Pages 151-164

   5. Conclusion: Humanistic Study in a Time of Nightmare Economics

      • Michael K. Walonen

      Pages 165-167

5. Back Matter

   Pages 168-178

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This book is a transnational study of how contemporary fiction writers from the United States and Canada to Nigeria to India to Dubai have conceptualized the emergent social spaces of the diverse corners of the neoliberal world system. Over the span of the past three to four decades, free market economic policies have been sold to or pushed upon every society on the globe in some way, shape, or form. The upshot of this has been a world system structured in terms of a vast shift of power and resources from government to private enterprise, dwindling civic life replaced by rising consumerism, an emerging oligarchic rentier class, large segments of population faced with meager material conditions of existence and few prospects of socio-economic mobility, and a looming sense of a near future dominated by further economic collapses and mounting social strife. This book analyses a wide cultural array of some of the most poignant narrative engagements with neoliberalism in its various localized manifestations throughout the world.  

• World literature
• Narrative fiction
• Neoliberalism
• Contemporary fiction
• Economic collapse
• Free market
• Postcolonial literature
• Capitalism
• postmodern literature

• Bethune-Cookman University, USA

  Michael K. Walonen

Michael K. Walonen is Assistant Professor of English at Bethune-Cookman University, USA. He specializes in transatlantic modern and contemporary cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and world literature. He is the author of the book Writing Tangier in the Postcolonial Transition: Space and Power in Expatriate and North African Literature and articles that have appeared in the journals Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory, Studies in Travel Writing, African Literature and Culture, and Frontiers: The International Journal of Study Abroad, as well as the collections Geocritical Explorations and On and Off the Page: Mapping in Text and Culture.

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