Impossibly Complicated Tales of Dispossession and Betrayal: Thomas Pynchon's Vineland and the Neoliberal Shift in America

Abstract

The 1970s were characterized by the ascendancy of a particular breed of right wing conservatism that advanced neoliberal reforms and precipitated the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. As an economic theory, neoliberalism proposes that the government de-regulate markets and ease financial burdens on corporations thus enabling wealth to be evenly distributed across the social spectrum by natural market processes. In practice, the process of manufacturing consent for these policies mobilized religious and nationalist rhetoric, caused an abiding cultural shift, and resulted in numerous economic crises and inequitable concentrations of wealth. Our project conducts an analysis of Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland in order to derive insights into this transformation of America. Published in 1990, the scope of Pynchon’s novel encompasses both the hippy movement that peaks in the late 60s and the rise of neoliberalism up through the middle of the Reagan administration in 1984— the year in which the novel takes place. Pynchon’s work is exemplary of what is called postmodern literature—the defining literary genre of the period which in many ways is unique precisely because of its political engagement with post-industrial capitalism—and, as such, encapsulates perhaps better than any writer the effects of neoliberalism. Our project has produced an essay (and a poster) that is comprised of three sections: An economic, cultural, and historical explanation of neoliberalism— An investigation of Pynchon’s critique of the media as it works to assimilate citizens into the cultural hegemony— And Pynchon’s critique of the ideologies and policy decisions surrounding the then contemporary environmental movement.