What is neoliberalism? The word isn't even recognised in spellcheck!
This of course might confirm it as part of the conspiracy, to keep you in the dark about what's really going on, or perhaps it's just a silly notion, meaning nothing at all!
These two texts, the chapter 'At Home in the Neon' from Dave Hickey's Air Guitar, and 'Sand Fear and Money in Dubai' by Mike Davis might help us work it out.
Dave Hickey became my critical hero almost just as soon as I first read him, and heard him lecture in Las Vegas and on Las Vegas on the subject of why Santa Fe being more fake than Vegas. He can write like a dream on art, literature, rock n' roll or for that matter your local topless bar.
Mike Davis is a bit more grumpy, he's a Marxist critic who made his name with a book; City of Quartz, that documented amongst other things the declining fortunes of LA's poor, and he's never liked Las Vegas, while Hickey was a long time enthusiast and resident.
When you google these texts you are likely to come across work by people who've done this course before. PLEASE make sure you source the original material and do not rely on students various interpretations, although a glance at them will give you a bit of confidence that you can do at least as well as they did.
Postscript No 1 : Write about the Writer!
Sometimes I'll add a postscript to this guide blog if something comes to mind in our tooing and frowing of e-mail 'conversation'. This advice is simple and predictable, make sure you write about the voice of the author of you text, not just the thing he or she is talking about and your opinion of it. So you should be writing about Will Self's way of talking about BPS, or Jonathan Meades way of talking about Zaha.
To give you an example, on reading Dave Hickey again, I sense a writer 'who rolls along as easily and robustly as a Harley Davidson' (my quote). That isn't a great encapsulation of his style, but if I add 'it's clear from reading Hickey that there is not much point in criticising 'America' in the abstract, because so much of the value of America is as seductive as a the gunning of a Harley or the greatest taste in a hamburger, it is blue collar and under the radar. It's only when those abstract qualities start to infringe on Hickey's basically Taxan outlaw lifestyle (big business comes to mind!) that he gets antsy and moves on'.
In that rather ordinary paragraph I actually say quite a lot; his life, his sense of things, the things he likes and doesn't, all riding on an exemplar (the Harley) we can all understand. Geddit?
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