AT THE JAIPUR literary festival in January 2015, the writer Eleanor Catton described New Zealand as a country governed by ‘neoliberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very money-hungry politicians who do not care about culture’.1 The comments generated much media controversy in her homeland. Catton was denounced for her insolence, ingratitude,
and even traitory. Some right-wing pundits disparaged what
they saw as her politically illiterate use of the term ‘neoliberal’.
Her comments triggered a local version of a reactionary discourse
that regards the concept of neoliberalism as the paranoid creation
of left conspiracy theorists.
