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Narratives of Inequality pp 155–210Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Global Neoliberalism

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Part of the book series: New Comparisons in World Literature ((NCWL))

Abstract

This chapter looks at the city as the prime site that registers the imprint of modern neoliberal inequality, with great wealth in close proximity to relative poverty. A long history of London fiction of inequality traces how this capital of capital has shifted from a colonial to a financial empire. In fiction from both developed and developing nations, the lives of the urban poor are similarly constrained, with a common set of responses to lack expressed in novels by Alex Wheatle, Leila Aboulela, Monica Ali, Alan Duff, Chris Abani, Aravind Adiga, Paolo Lins, and Dionne Brand. Far from opting out of the consumerist culture of late capitalism, the poorest of society struggle to articulate and respond to the slow violence of neoliberalism’s attritional competition for opportunities and resources.

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  1. University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Melissa Kennedy

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  1. Melissa Kennedy
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Correspondence to Melissa Kennedy .

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Kennedy, M. (2017). Global Neoliberalism. In: Narratives of Inequality. New Comparisons in World Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59957-1_4

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