Busboys Books Presents: Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed by Lisa Duggan
Date and Time
Oct 29, 2019 6:00 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Oct 29, 2019 6:00 pm
450K
This event is free and open to the public. Seating is first come, first served. Copies of Mean Girl will be available in the bookstore and full menu & bar will also be available for purchase throughout the event. The discussion begins at 6:30PM.
Ayn Rand’s complicated notoriety as popular writer, leader of a political and philosophical cult, reviled intellectual, and ostentatious public figure endured beyond her death in 1982. In the twenty-first century, she has been resurrected as a serious reference point for mainstream figures, especially those on the political right from Paul Ryan to Donald Trump. Mean Girl follows Rand’s trail through the twentieth century from the Russian Revolution to the Cold War and traces her posthumous appeal and the influence of her novels via her cruel, surly, sexy heroes. Outlining the impact of Rand’s philosophy of selfishness, Mean Girl illuminates the Randian shape of our neoliberal, contemporary culture of greed and the dilemmas we face in our political present.
Lisa Duggan is a historian, journalist, activist, and Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. She is the author of The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. She tweets at @TheFunFury.
Elisabeth Anker is an Associate Professor of American Studies at GW, where she teaches and researches contemporary American political thought and culture. She is the author of Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom (Duke, 2014), and is currently finishing two books: Ugly Freedoms and The Wrath of Sovereignty. She is a frequent contributor on national television for analyzing the culture of the Trump administration.
