The Spatial/Political-Economic Dynamics of Theme Parks in Contemporary Transatlantic Fiction

Abstract

While the narrative fiction of Dubai places in evidence a number of the core attributes of neoliberalism as they play out in especially unqualified social-spatial form, it is equally possible to look beyond particular places to certain telltale forms of spatial arrangement for further insight into the lived realities of neoliberal society. One of these forms, though it predates the emergence of neoliberalism on the policy stage by about two decades, has been an integral part of the consumer society that arose in the aftermath of World War II and has increasingly taken on neoliberal contours of class-based exclusionary accessibility, omnipresent commodity fetishism, and service industry labor exploitation: the theme park.