After Globalization

In lively and unflinching prose, Eric Cazdyn and Imre Szeman argue that contemporary thought about the world is disabled by a fatal flaw: the inability to think "an after" to globalization. After establishing seven theses (on education, morality, history, future, capitalism, nation, and common sense) that challenge the false promises that sustain this time–limit, After Globalization examines four popular thinkers (Thomas Friedman, Richard Florida, Paul Krugman and Naomi Klein) and how their work is dulled by these promises. Cazdyn and Szeman then speak to students from around the globe who are both unconvinced and uninterested in these promises and who understand the world very differently than the way it is popularly represented.

After Globalization argues that a true capacity to think an after to globalization is the very beginning of politics today.

Acknowledgments.

A Precis: The Argument.

Part I: The Afterlife of Globalization.

a. Nothing Can Save Us.

b. From Globalization to Anti–Americanism.

c. From Anti–Americanism Back to Globalization.

d. "I face the World as it is": On Obama.

e. Of and After: Two Narratives of the Global.

f. Seven Theses after Globalization.

g. Something s Missing.

Part II: The Limits of Liberalism.

a. After Globalization, or, Liberalism after Neoliberalism.

b. Neoliberals Dressed in Black: Richard Florida.

c. The Anecdotal American: Thomas Friedman.

d. Confidence Game: Paul Krugman.

e. The Non–Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein.

f. The Limits of Hollywood: Michael Clayton.

Part III: The Global Generation.

a. Next Generation.

b. From Anti–Americanism to Globalization.

c. A Map of the World.

d. Biogeographies.

e. Can′t Get There from Here.

Conclusion: "Oh, Don′t Ask Why!"

Index.

Eric Cazdyn is Professor of Cultural and Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, and Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. He is author of The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (2003) and the forthcoming book, The Already Dead: The New Time of Politics, Culture, and Medicine.

Imre Szeman is Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. He is co–editor of Cultural Theory: An Anthology (Wiley–Blackwell 2010), author of Zones of Instability: Literature, Postcolonialism and the Nation (2003) and co–author of Popular Culture: A User?s Guide (2nd. ed. 2009).

Summing Up: Recommended.  Upper–division undergraduates and above.   (Choice, 1 August 2012)