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  • Writing Precarity:Neoliberalism and the Globalized Atlantic
  • Najnin Islam (bio)
Alexandra Perisic, Precarious Crossings: Immigration, Neoliberalism, and the Atlantic. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2019. ix + 221 pp. $29.95.

In a 2019 issue of South Atlantic Quarterly titled "Neoliberalism's Authoritarian (Re)turns," editors Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore question the usefulness of the term neoliberalism to describe our contemporary moment marked by "the tawdry array of authoritarian (re)turns that have been witnessed in various parts of the world in the decade since the global financial crisis of 2008—from Trump to Turkey, from the Brexit debacle to the Brazilian coup, and much else besides."1 This is but one example of contemporary skepticism toward the idea of neoliberalism, especially what it means, how it is used as an idea and a practice in different ways across global contexts, and what processes it cannot adequately account for. However, even as scholars acknowledge that the meaning of neoliberalism is not always readily apparent, they remain invested in understanding its influence on the cultural sphere. Literary scholarship in this area has sought to demonstrate how neoliberalism influences not only literary form and representation, but also shifts in method and genre such as the resurgence of realism and the memoir's rise to prominence.2 Recent work has also [End Page 130] examined world literature in relation to neoliberalism, arguing, first, that it is inextricable from globalized capitalism and its effects must thus be studied beyond Europe and America, and second, that cultural studies has the ability to illuminate features of neoliberalism that other disciplines cannot.3 Alexandra Perisic's Precarious Crossings: Immigration, Neoliberalism, and the Atlantic builds on this rich body of scholarship: by offering "a literary account of a multilingual Atlantic under neoliberalism," Perisic foregrounds the entanglement of globalization and neoliberalism that produces varying experiences of precarity across the Atlantic (2). Her project is less invested in the debates over the meaning of neoliberalism and more interested in training a critical eye on the effects of processes such as debt, privatization, and structural adjustment programs on vulnerable populations. Mobilizing a multilingual literary archive, Perisic demonstrates how contemporary fiction represents the experience of precarity, while also acting as sites of resistance to neoliberal forms of dispossession and marginalization. In doing so, the book reveals how "neoliberalization, precarity, immigration, and the Atlantic conceptually intersect" (16).

The Atlantic as a geopolitical space, a field of inquiry, and a mode of organizing knowledge has a long and fraught history. Bernard Baylin's Eurocentric vision of the Atlantic is countered in the works of Paul Gilroy, Marcus Rediker, Peter Linebaugh, and Joseph Roach, among others, who brought the critical insights of Marxist, race, and postcolonial studies to bear on its study. This body of scholarship, which William Boelhower describes as part of the "new Atlantic studies matrix," illuminated the transnational and deeply racialized character of the Atlantic world.4 Precarious Crossings is energized by these conversations, especially their attention to the Atlantic world's deep entanglement with global racial capitalism and those disproportionately affected by it. It therefore also shares intellectual [End Page 131] affinity with more recent scholarship such as Yogita Goyal's Runaway Genres: The Global Afterlives of Slavery, which traces the literary afterlives of the slave narrative within the context of contemporary migration across the Global South and the production of vulnerable populations, including refugees, detainees, child soldiers, and asylum seekers.5 Perisic's focus is likewise on an expansively conceptualized Atlantic world under the aegis of global neoliberalism, and the narratives she examines are those about contemporary immigrants, refugees, and laborers.

The Atlantic in Precarious Crossings is multilingual and multipolar. Perisic argues that despite its scope and its invitation to think about history, culture, and socialites beyond the framework of the nation-state, scholarship foundational to Atlantic studies ultimately remains tethered to the Anglophone world. In response, contemporary scholars have turned to the Francophone, Hispanophone, and Lusophone worlds to push back against the boundaries of the field, but a substantial body of this work, as Thea Pitman and Andy Stafford note, remains limited by its "monolingual/monocultural and, at times, monoracial interest in the field" (qtd. in Perisic 17...

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