Growing Up Postmodern: Neoliberalism and the War on the Young (Culture and Politics Series)

Introduction : What's left of modernity? / Ronald Strickland -- "A caste, a culture, a market" : youth, marketing, and lifestyle in postwar America / Bill Osgerby -- The war on the young : corporate culture, schooling, and the politics of "zero tolerance" / Henry A. Giroux -- Richard Price and the ordeal of the postmodern city / Jerry Phillips -- "Remorseless young predators" : the bottom line of "caging children" / Gary L. Smith -- Growing up incarcerated : the prison-industrial complex and literacy as resistance / Elizabeth Kleinfeld -- Ideology and interpellation in the first-person shooter / Andrew Kurtz -- Trouble child : Barthes's imagined youth / Tim Scheie -- The big business of surfing's oceanic feeling : thirty years of Tracks magazine / Margaret Henderson -- Female adolescence and its discontents / Angela E. Hubler -- The mis/education of righteous babes : popular culture and third-wave feminism / Jennifer Drake -- Post-'68 : theory is in the streets / Astra Taylor -- To be young, countercultural, and Black : racial pluralism, countercultures, and African American activism in the 1960s / David M. Jones.;This collection takes its inspiration from Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd, a landmark critique of American culture at the end of the 1950s. The contributors to this volume focus on adverse social conditions that confront young people in postmodernity, such as the relentless pressure to consume, social dis-investment in education, harsh responses to youth crime, and the continuing climate of intolerance that falls heavily on the young. In essays on education, youth crime, counseling, protest movements, fiction, identity-formation and popular culture, the contributors look for moments of resistance to the subsumption of youth culture under the logic of global capitalism.

This collection takes its inspiration from Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd, a landmark critique of American culture at the end of the 1950s. Goodman called for a revival of social investment in urban planning, public welfare, workplace democracy, free speech, racial harmony, sexual freedom, popular culture, and education to produce a society that could inspire young people, and an adult society worth joining. In postmodernity, Goodman's enlightenment-era vision of social progress has been judged obsolete. For many postmodern critics, subjectivity is formed and expressed not through social investment, but through consumption; the freedom to consume has replaced political empowerment. But the power to consume is distributed very unevenly, and even for the affluent it never fulfills the desire produced by the advertising industry. The contributors to this volume focus on adverse social conditions that confront young people in postmodernity, such as the relentless pressure to consume, social dis-investment in education, harsh responses to youth crime, and the continuing climate of intolerance that falls heavily on the young. In essays on education, youth crime, counseling, protest movements, fiction, identity-formation and popular culture, the contributors look for moments of resistance to the subsumption of youth culture under the logic of global capitalism.

Title Page 3 Copyright Page 4 Dedication 5 Contents 7 Acknowledgments 9 1. Introduction: What's Left of Modernity? Ronald Strickland 11 2. "A Caste, a Culture, a Market": Youth, Marketing, and Lifestyle in Postwar America Bill Osgerby 25 3. The War on the Young: Corporate Culture, Schooling, and the Politics of "Zero Tolerance" Henry A. Giroux 45 4. Richard Price and the Ordeal of the Postmodern City Jerry Phillips 57 5. "Remorseless Young Predators": The Bottom Line of "Caging Children" Gary L. Smith 75 6. Growing Up Incarcerated: The Prison-Industrial Complex and Literacy as Resistance Elizabeth Kleinfeld 97 7. Ideology and Interpellation in the First-Person Shooter Andrew Kurtz 117 8. Trouble Child: Barthes's Imagined Youth Tim Scheie 133 9. The Big Business of Surfing's Oceanic Feeling: Thirty Years of Tracks Magazine Margaret Henderson 151 10. Female Adolescence and Its Discontents Angela E. Hubler 179 11. The Mis/Education of Righteous Babes: Popular Culture and Third-Wave Feminism Jennifer Drake 191 12. Post -'68: Theory Is in the Streets Astra Taylor 215 13. To Be Young, Countercultural, and Black: Racial Pluralism, Countercultures, and African American Activism of the 1960s David M. Jones 231 Index 263 About the Contributors 271