The Art and Soul of Neoliberalism

This opening chapter traces the rise of neoliberalism to hegemonic dominance in the world as a whole since the 1970s and examines salient aspects of its impact on the cultural field.1 How do we explain the relation of neoliberal ideology and political economy to art in particular and culture in general? Such a task requires a wider-ranging and critical methodology for analysing the politics of culture holistically instead of merely supplementing study of cultural policy with a broadening notion of, say, ‘implicit policy’. For an inclusive treatment of the issues at stake concerning neoliberal culture, then, the chapter draws upon the interdisciplinary resources of cultural studies and the social sciences.