Neoliberalism and Young Adult Fiction: Exceptionalism, Exploitation, and Erasure

In the twenty-first century, the influence of neoliberalism, the belief that society benefits when both individuals and corporations are free to maximize their talents in the service of responding to social needs and problems, resonates through all domains of human life. And yet, little critical study has been given to the reproduction of a neoliberal social order in YA literature. Neoliberalism and Young Adult Fiction: Exceptionalism, Exploitation, and Erasure examines how some YA literature naturalizes neoliberalism in positioning teenagers as self-enclosed, competitive individuals. At the same time, however, the authors also examine other YA novels as potential sites of resistance that acknowledge teenagers’ agency to reject neoliberalism’s destructive impulses and to work for social justice and equality through collective action.

With that in mind, the authors of Neoliberalism and Young Adult Fiction analyze such concepts as how the exceptionality of specific characters who embody neoliberal ideals leads to self-enclosed individualism and how environmental exploitation and consumerism lead to destructive effects. The book progresses to an in-depth examination of how racism undergirds US neoliberalism and environmental exploitation. From scrutinizing racism--and the rejection of neoliberalism inherent in the antiracism movement--the study turns to an examination of gender, specifically focusing on the relationship between sexism, exploitation, and embodied rejections of patriarchal thinking. Indeed, erasure is implicated in racism, sexism, and all forms of discrimination that are borne of exploitation. Finally, youth activism--with its rejection of neoliberal ideologies--leads to a culminating chapter about how global youth link YA literature to their protest movements.

Sean P. Connors is associate professor of English education at University of Arkansas. His scholarship and teaching focuses on the application of diverse critical perspectives to young adult literature. He is editor of The Politics of Panem: Challenging Genres and coeditor of Teaching Girls on Fire: Essays on Dystopian Young Adult Literature in the Classroom. Roberta Seelinger Trites is Distinguished Professor of English Emerita at Illinois State University. She is author of many works, including Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children’s Literature; Literary Conceptualizations of Growth: Metaphors and Cognition in Adolescent Literature;and Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children’s and Adolescent Literature, the latter published by University Press of Mississippi.