Questioning Ayn Rand

Questioning Ayn Rand: Subjectivity, Political Economy, and the Arts offers a sustained academic critique of Ayn Rand’s works and her wider Objectivist philosophy. While Rand’s texts are often dismissed out of hand by those hostile to the ideology promoted within them, these essays argue instead that they need to be taken seriously and analysed in detail. Rand’s influential worldview does not tolerate uncertainty, relying as it does upon a notion of truth untroubled by doubt. In contrast, the contributors to this volume argue that any progressive response to Rand should resist the dubious comforts of a position of ethical or aesthetic purity, even as they challenge the reductive individualistic ideology promoted within her writing. Drawing on a range of sources and approaches from Psychoanalysis to The Gold Standard and from Hannah Arendt to Spiderman, these essays consider Rand’s works in the context of wider political, economic, and philosophical debates.

“Questioning Ayn Rand provides a valuable guide to the peculiar field of Ayn Rand scholarship and expands and refigures the field in much needed ways. Examining Rand’s engagement with topics as diverse as film, childhood, economics, psychology, and pedagogy, the essays in this collection lay the groundwork for a more fruitful, critical engagement with this architect of the neoliberal Right.” (Myka Tucker-Abramson, Assistant Professor in American Literature, University of Warwick, UK)

“This dazzling partisan reading of Ayn Rand makes the case for the importance of a debate that has not quite happened yet. Finally giving an answer to the question of why Rand is valued so highly in the marketplace of ideas, this book is a critique of neo-liberal politics, pedagogy, psychology, and cultural criticism which does not let us wallow in the purity of our dissent.” (Daniela Caselli, Professor of Modern Literature, The University of Manchester, UK)

​“There’s hardly been a moreurgent time to discuss Ayn Rand. And we ignore her at our peril. Reading Rand gives us a front-row ticket to the theories and principles of capitalist economies and man unburdened by être-pour-autrui. Her novels and philosophical writing gives us license to be a fly-on-the-wall in a board meeting of a profit-driven firm before it’s coated with the gloss of corporate social responsibility. It’s the raw product before it can be shown to people with a conscience. This fantastic volume proves, once and for all, that it would be insufficient to leave Rand at the door and away from the grown-ups. Rand reveals the true, unfettered expression of a politics that is too powerful today. A political worldview that is currently responsible for how we approach a crisis and emerge from it. The Left must read Rand. She’s far too important to be chucked.” (Carl Packman, author of Payday Lending: Global Growth of the High-Cost Credit Market (Palgrave 2014))

Neil Cocks is Associate Professor of Literary Perspective in the Department of English Literature, University of Reading, UK. He is the author of Higher Education Discourse and Deconstruction: Challenging the Case for Transparency and Objecthood (Palgrave 2017) and The Peripheral Child in Nineteenth Century Literature and its Criticism (Palgrave 2014).