There's been some interesting pushback re: the periodization here. Isn't 1979 (when Culture of Narcissism was published) already in the neoliberal era? Or at least the "point of no return" as @ummodern puts it?

But all these responses point to pol econ, not culture, which 1/ https://twitter.com/warendenkform/status/1343552172924006405

misses the point, I think. Or rather it illuminates a diff point. In contrast to the scholarship on the New Deal Order, there is an unresolved disagreement between culturalist and materialist accounts of neoliberalism about when it becomes visible/dominant.

Although there is 2/

ample scholarship in an intellectual/cultural historical vein that seeks to excavate the roots of the New Deal's ideas, the dominant account of something like a "New Deal culture"–Denning's Cultural Front–stresses the synchrony of economic and cultural transformation, with 3/

the rise of the CIO and the rise of a laborist structure of feeling not only simultaneous but mutually reinforcing. (Denning even softly pushes back against a ND-centered periodization, preferring "the Age of the CIO" to the "New Deal Order.)

OTOH, pol econ scholarship on 4/

the "neoliberal era" has been resolutely dragging its starting date backward as the Seventies has assumed a greater and greater historiographical role as the postwar watershed, while culturalist scholarship remains focused on the 1980s. This may in part be the residue of 5/

cultural periodizations set by discussions of postmodernism, which was also critically identified as truly coming into its own in the 80s. But even for cultural histories, the 1970s remains the "last days" (Jefferson Cowie's phrase) of the NDO rather than the early years of 6/

neoliberalism. Therefore, it seems much more defensible from a cultural pt of view to identify 1979 as still very much pre-neoliberal, esp consideringthat Lasch's ideas had been percolating for several years and was more a description of, say, 1975 than it was an instant 7/

diagnosis of 1979.

What is the upshot of all this? Should culturalist and materialist accounts of neoliberalism parallel one another chronologically? Not necessarily: the synchrony of the NDO is likely exceptional–disjunctions btw material changes and cultural expressions 8/

are common, if not the rule. But I do think it points to the lack of integration between the two literatures on neoliberalism. This cuts both ways, but tbh I think there is too much deference amng intellectual/cultural historians to a rather crude base/superstructure relation. 9/

Culturalist accounts generally seem to expect that culture will be a lagging rather than a leading indicator, and thus there is no need to rethink the 1980s as the critical decade for the birth of neoliberal culture.

The exceptions to this tendency are of an improbably 10/

idealist bent, with an unrealistic amount of agency given to intellectuals (especially economists). Imo, the "major" intellectual interpretation of the period–Daniel Rodgers's Age of Fracture–falls into this trap too often.

I think we need more balance, greater sensitivity 11/

to the interplay of culture and political economy in the neoliberal era. Unfortunately, the right balance is very difficult to strike, and both literatures are not yet mature enough for someone to have done so. 12/12