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Lisa Duggan

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Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed (American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present Book 8) Kindle Edition

by Lisa Duggan (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 122 ratings

Part of: American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present (15 books)

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"Astute."—New York Times

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.

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American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present
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137 pages
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English
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University of California Press
Publication date

May 14, 2019
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Cultural historian Lisa Duggan has written a small, perfect book which accomplishes so much in only a few pages, with irony and wit, humor and insight. . . . The book is fun, funny and in only 116 pages explains so much about not only its subject but of our neoliberal or reactionary culture of greed and its obstinate commitment to economic fantasy.” ― KPFK/Bibliocracy

“Duggan goes beyond the more standard biographical accounts of Rand and gets to the bottom of her novels and how they set a disturbing tone for global capitalism. Further, Duggan explains the mischaracterizations of Rand in modern memory, and provides expert analysis of current affairs in helping readers to contextualize the actual historical Rand and her likely political endorsements as well as her most reactionary views.” ― Truthout

"The therapeutic value of Duggan’s book goes well beyond freeing me from shame for my teen-age lack of literary taste and political discernment; it also provides an explanation for our current cultural and political moment. . . . Duggan’s book sums up Rand’s life and philosophy in under ninety pages." -- Masha Gessen ― The New Yorker

"The power of Duggan’s book seems that maybe in unmasking Rand’s philosophical legitimacy and hold on the right removes a central prop and leaves the right ever more naked.” ― The Baffler

"[Duggan] is sharp, engaging, and funny when writing about Rand, whose magnetism, determination, grandiosity, desperation, and galloping narcissism Duggan captures beautifully."

― New York Review of Books

"Duggan’s skills as a cultural historian and her sharp-witted socio-political commentary fuse seamlessly together in this short yet fascinating book that is a necessary read for students of culture and politics, but also activists and organisers who feel the deep disillusionment of what seems like a never-ending neoliberal era." ― LSE Review of Books

“Lisa Duggan gets it exactly right in Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed when she writes that Rand's ‘particular gift was not for philosophical elaboration, but for stark condensation and aphorism. She deployed this gift to create a moral economy of inequality to infuse her softly pornographic romance fiction with the political eros that would captivate a mass readership.’" ― Inside Higher Education

“Lisa Duggan gets it exactly right . . . when she writes that Rand's ‘particular gift was not for philosophical elaboration, but for stark condensation and aphorism. She deployed this gift to create a moral economy of inequality to infuse her softly pornographic romance fiction with the political eros that would captivate a mass readership.’" ― Times Higher Education

“‘A history of the influence of Ayn Rand and her particular brand of narcissistic amorality, and an argument that her novels function now as ‘conversion machines for our contemporary culture of greed.’ Exhibit A: Paul Ryan.” ― LitHub

“Lisa Duggan wrote a book that explains everything you need to know about Ayn Rand and why she became so enormously consequential so that you don’t have to read Rand’s work yourself.”
― The Dig

From the Inside Flap

“Lisa Duggan does a deep dive into Ayn Rand so that we don’t have to. Instead, we can read Duggan’s impassioned, insightful, sometimes terrifying, sometimes humorous account of Rand’s philosophy and influence. Calls to understand and reject the allure of cruelty rarely feel as lucid and timely.”—Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

“The self-described ‘man worshipper’ Ayn Rand titillated generations of strivers with her gospel of free-reign capitalism as the apex of human achievement. As that fiction yields ever more wreckage and despair, Mean Girl provides urgent insight into how Rand converted readers to her credo of self-flattery, pious greed, contempt for those in need, and obliviousness to history. Exalted are the profit-driven for they will inherit the earth? How could anyone come to embrace smug indifference to the suffering of others as worthy of admiration? Read this luminous account to find out.”—Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America

“Lisa Duggan’s wry and wise Mean Girl is the Ayn Rand primer we’ve been waiting for, an inquiry into how a narcissistic cult became a national creed. Duggan’s short history neatly reveals the deep affinities between Randianism and Trumpism, and will, if we are lucky, serve as a requiem for both.”—Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

“Mean Girl offers an eye-opening panoramic view of the rise of the ‘open-air theater of cruelty’ that takes Ayn Rand as its muse. The whole package of power-love associated with Rand throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—biography, economics, cultural politics, white masculinity, authoritarianism, sexual violence—comes vividly to life here in Lisa Duggan’s beautiful, stunning rendering.”—Lauren Berlant, coauthor of Sex, or the Unbearable

“Sometimes, in the right hands, a single figure can help make sense of an era. The right hands are Lisa Duggan’s, and the single, rather unlikely, figure is Ayn Rand, who is ready for her close-up. An individualist who built a cult, a critic of the masses whose career depended on their media, an Objectivist who marketed her philosophy via novels soaked in sex and sentimentality, Rand aggrandized greed as a virtue and was the unapologetic purveyor of what Duggan brilliantly calls ‘optimistic cruelty.’ This short, accessible, and powerful book charts the rise of affective neoliberalism through the lens of a life. Buy it for anyone who has ever been lured by The Fountainhead or who needs help shrugging off Atlas Shrugged.”—Bonnie Honig, author of Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair

“With Mean Girl, Lisa Duggan offers readers a history of how greed and capitalist accumulation were made cool and sexy. In a historical moment in which billionaires have been refashioned into super-beings, Duggan’s history of this libertarian matriarch provides a necessary and eye-opening intervention.”—Roderick Ferguson, author of One-Dimensional Queer

“Reading Lisa Duggan’s Mean Girl is an exercise in emotional upheaval. One minute I was laughing out loud, the next crying into my tea, and then finally feeling confident that human beings cannot allow the suffocation of Ayn Rand’s thinking to get to us. It is a terrific book only partly about Rand, because it is really an intellectual history of neoliberalism—and its toxic outcomes.”—Vijay Prashad, Director, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

From the Back Cover

“Lisa Duggan does a deep dive into Ayn Rand so that we don’t have to. Instead, we can read Duggan’s impassioned, insightful, sometimes terrifying, sometimes humorous account of Rand’s philosophy and influence. Calls to understand and reject the allure of cruelty rarely feel as lucid and timely.”—Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

“The self-described ‘man worshipper’ Ayn Rand titillated generations of strivers with her gospel of free-reign capitalism as the apex of human achievement. As that fiction yields ever more wreckage and despair, Mean Girl provides urgent insight into how Rand converted readers to her credo of self-flattery, pious greed, contempt for those in need, and obliviousness to history. Exalted are the profit-driven for they will inherit the earth? How could anyone come to embrace smug indifference to the suffering of others as worthy of admiration? Read this luminous account to find out.”—Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America

“Lisa Duggan’s wry and wise Mean Girl is the Ayn Rand primer we’ve been waiting for, an inquiry into how a narcissistic cult became a national creed. Duggan’s short history neatly reveals the deep affinities between Randianism and Trumpism, and will, if we are lucky, serve as a requiem for both.”—Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

“Mean Girl offers an eye-opening panoramic view of the rise of the ‘open-air theater of cruelty’ that takes Ayn Rand as its muse. The whole package of power-love associated with Rand throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—biography, economics, cultural politics, white masculinity, authoritarianism, sexual violence—comes vividly to life here in Lisa Duggan’s beautiful, stunning rendering.”—Lauren Berlant, coauthor of Sex, or the Unbearable

“Sometimes, in the right hands, a single figure can help make sense of an era. The right hands are Lisa Duggan’s, and the single, rather unlikely, figure is Ayn Rand, who is ready for her close-up. An individualist who built a cult, a critic of the masses whose career depended on their media, an Objectivist who marketed her philosophy via novels soaked in sex and sentimentality, Rand aggrandized greed as a virtue and was the unapologetic purveyor of what Duggan brilliantly calls ‘optimistic cruelty.’ This short, accessible, and powerful book charts the rise of affective neoliberalism through the lens of a life. Buy it for anyone who has ever been lured by The Fountainhead or who needs help shrugging off Atlas Shrugged.”—Bonnie Honig, author of Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair

“With Mean Girl, Lisa Duggan offers readers a history of how greed and capitalist accumulation were made cool and sexy. In a historical moment in which billionaires have been refashioned into super-beings, Duggan’s history of this libertarian matriarch provides a necessary and eye-opening intervention.”—Roderick Ferguson, author of One-Dimensional Queer

“Reading Lisa Duggan’s Mean Girl is an exercise in emotional upheaval. One minute I was laughing out loud, the next crying into my tea, and then finally feeling confident that human beings cannot allow the suffocation of Ayn Rand’s thinking to get to us. It is a terrific book only partly about Rand, because it is really an intellectual history of neoliberalism—and its toxic outcomes.”—Vijay Prashad, Director, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

About the Author

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.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07P785TC5
Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; 1st edition (May 14, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 14, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 396 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 137 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,187,830 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #46 in Politics Literary Criticism
- #119 in Women Authors Literary Criticism
- #136 in Capitalism

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4.2 122 ratings

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Lisa Duggan

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Lisa Duggan is a journalist, historian, activist and Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. She blogs at LisaDuggan.org and tweets @TheFunFury. She escaped from The Vortex of Hell, aka Virginia Beach, VA, and now lives with KittyGaga in New York City.

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Glenn Hendler

A great read!

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2019

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I just finished Mean Girl, and it's a great read! Smart, insightful, accessible without dumbing anything down, and often very funny. Just over 100 pages (so it's also a quick read) and you know lots about Ayn Rand and how she became so influential on the right. As a bonus, you get a clear definition and history of "neoliberalism"--a word that's often used in confusing ways--and why Rand both is and isn't connected to that ideology.

What I liked best is that even though Duggan obviously doesn't like or agree with Ayn Rand's ideas (she gives that away in the title!), you do get some understanding about why people find her fiction and her ideas compelling. I read Anthem and The Fountainhead as a teenager, and they felt to the adolescent boy I was like they were real rebellion against the status quo. [Later on, when I was a bit older, I figured out that the ideas in the novel were simplistic and silly, and when I tried to read the fiction I found it unbearably badly written]. Duggan explains something important about the libidinal energy that must have appealed to me back then, and shows how Rand (consciously and unconsciously) worked to make her ideology sexy.

My only disappointment is that I would have loved to read what Duggan has to say about the movie of The Fountainhead! Still, I'm so glad someone as smart as Duggan did a deep dive into Ayn Rand's fiction and other work, and came back with this concise, readable set of insights into why such a terrible writer and such a derivative thinker could have had such an influence on our politics and culture.

8 people found this helpful

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Benjamin W. Glass

Even Ayn Rand's fans should add this book to their library

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2020

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Look, it's an interesting book and a deep dive in the life and times of Ayn Rand. It seems fairly well researched as to who did what do who at what time and it does have at least some commentary on each of Rand's works.

But...

I kept reading, waiting for an analysis of the philosophy and a well-reasoned opposition to Objectivism itself. Tell us why Rand is wrong. The book just ends and here's the flaw: its not good enough to say "well the world is a mess; these certain individuals have professed to being influenced by Rand; and they have each had some political influence and so, Rand's philosophy is flawed and she is "mean."

There is no deep dive into the philosophy - no analysis of laissez capitalism and demonstration of why such a philosophy would be 'evil' and no real attempt to link the philosophy of "life as the standard for living" to today's ills.

All that being said, if you are a fan of Rand, this is a good book to add to your library, if for no other reason than to help put in historical context (in terms of her developmeent of her thinking about Objectivism ) her published works.

2 people found this helpful

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Greg Koenderman

An excellent quick intro to /summary of the life and thinking of Ayn Rand

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2019

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I have long disliked Ayn Rand, based purely on glancing accounts of her thinking. I wanted to add some flesh to this dislike, but without having to wade through her rubbish. This book served that purpose very well. I think this book is aimed at people with precisely my objective - the author's dislike of Rand is not downplayed, so those who are either sympathetic to Rand or undecided, might feel this is a hit-job. It is also a conveniently quick read, which by necessity means it is perhaps too light an overview.

One person found this helpful

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Sister

Superb poitical and cultural exploration of Rand's influence

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2019

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Lisa Duggan's concise but substantive look at the political and cultural influence of Ayn Rand is stunning. I feel like I've been waiting most of a lifetime for a book that is as wonderfully readable as it is insightful. Many who write about Rand reduce her to a caricature hero or demon without taking her, and the history and choices that produced her seriously as a subject of cultural inquiry. I am one of those people who first encountered Rand's books - novels, but also some nonfiction and her play, "The Night of January 16th," in which audience members were selected as jurors – as a teenager. Under the thrall of some right-wing locals, I was so drawn to Rand's larger-than-life themes, the crude polarization of "individualism" and "conformity," the admonition to selfishness as a moral virtue, her reductive dismissal of the public good as "collectivism." Her work circulated endlessly in those circles of the Goldwater-ite right. I have changed over many years, and my own life experiences have led me to reject the casual cruelty and vicious supremacist bent of Rand's beliefs. But over those many years, the coterie of Rand true believers has kept the faith and expanded. One of the things I value about Duggan's compelling account is her willingness to take seriously the far reach of Rand's indifference to human suffering even as she strips away the veneer that suggests Rand's beliefs were deep. In fact, though her views are deeply-seated, Rand is, at heart, a confidence artist, appealing only to narrow self-interest at the expense of the well-being of whole societies. I learned that the hard way, but I learned it. Now I am recommending Duggan's wise book to others who seek to understand today's cultural and political moment in the United States and the rise of an ethic of indifference to anybody but the already affluent. Duggan is comfortable with complexity; most Randian champions or detractors are not.

26 people found this helpful

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Mbs

A little hard to follow

Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2019

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I liked the premise of the book, but I feel the reading was a bit difficult to follow. I felt it was far more about Rand's history than linking the author's point with supporting facts. I am not sure how much Rand had to do with the mentality of and the deregulation in the 1980s; there could have been many even stronger factors. I'm ambivalent but will give it another read. Also, the author's emotions got to her when she would label Neoliberals as zombies. This discredited her a bit, IMO.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Ginger Goodwin

Truth about Ayn Rand

Reviewed in Canada on October 9, 2019

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Ayn Rand was a selfish mean person who managed to seduce millions of Americans who like to think they're smart when they're actually stupidly selfish.

Erwin Hofmann

Excellent ... a must read ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 3, 2020

Verified Purchase

... "what can we do?" against Neo-liberalisms cruelty and toxic philosophy which thinks: "it is OK to be a Sociopath" ... quoting Lisa Duggan: "Organize of course, as so many on the global feminist, antiracist, anti-Neo-liberal left are now doing ... expose the cruelty at the Hart of Neo-liberalisms, and build on the social solidarity Ayn Rand worked so hard to discredit and destroy. Reject Ayn Rand, after all, she rejected you" ... yes indeed and it is high-time ...

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Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed (American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present Book 8) Kindle Edition

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