Books by Daniel R McClure
Neoliberalism took shape in the 1930s and 1940s as a transnational political philosophy and syste... more Neoliberalism took shape in the 1930s and 1940s as a transnational political philosophy and system of economic, political, and cultural relations. Resting on the fundamental premise that the free market should be unfettered by government intrusion, neoliberal policies have primarily redirected the state's prerogatives away from the postwar Keynesian welfare system and toward the insulation of finance and corporate America from democratic pressure. As neoliberal ideas gained political currency in the 1960s and 1970s, a reactionary cultural turn catalyzed their ascension. The cinema, music, magazine culture, and current events discourse of the 1970s provided the space of negotiation permitting these ideas to take hold and be challenged.
Daniel Robert McClure's book follows the interaction between culture and economics during the transition from Keynesianism in the mid-1960s to the triumph of neoliberalism at the dawn of the 1980s. From the 1965 debate between William F. Buckley and James Baldwin, through the pages of BusinessWeek and Playboy, to the rise of exploitation cinema in the 1970s, McClure tracks the increasingly shared perception by white males that they had "lost" their long-standing rights and that a great neoliberal reckoning might restore America's repressive racial, sexual, gendered, and classed foundations in the wake of the 1960s.
“Winter in America is terrific, moving ably between culture and political economy to mount a sophisticated consideration of race and gender within neoliberalism, all while taking the long view, in contrast to so many accounts supposing that 1972 marked the start something fully new. As monuments fall and we have a chance to rethink received wisdom, it offers the reader a journey that is both unpredictable and exciting.”
—David Roediger, author of The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
“This is a dazzling tour de force and a sweeping and stimulating synthesis of politics, music, film, poetry, neoliberalism—and more. The cast of characters—James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, John Wayne, and Jayne Cortez, among others—is similarly expansive. It demonstrates the potency of what happens when American studies is executed expertly.”
—Gerald Horne, author of The Bittersweet Science: Racism, Racketeering, and the Political Economy of Boxing
"At a time when modern-day America's cultural and political divides are wider than ever, it's necessary to ask how the nation came to this painful point. In Winter in America, Daniel Robert McClure provides answers. This book frequently makes for uncomfortable reading, but honest reflection on painful facts isn't supposed to be easy. The past has much to teach us, and Winter in America is an essential guide."
—Jeff Guinn, New York Times bestselling author of Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson and The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
Papers by Daniel R McClure
“No Depression”: The Nostalgia and Authenticity of Alternative Country
Historical Theory and Methods through Popular Music, 1970–2000, 2017
This chapter examines the aftermath of alternative rock’s success as many artists turned toward a... more This chapter examines the aftermath of alternative rock’s success as many artists turned toward a roots-oriented, country and folk music sound similar to the pre-1980s (and sometimes pre-World War II) eras of country and folk music. Ideas of nostalgia and authenticity circulated through the discourse surrounding alt-country, particularly as mainstream country music increasingly became more commercially oriented, with older artists and many newcomers seeking an “authentic” country sound which became excluded from the newer, more profitable corporate pop country sound. Indie artists who left alternative rock as it entered the mainstream sought refuge in the nostalgia-inducing sounds of stripped-down acoustic folk and country music. However, by the dawn of the twentieth century, the critics on the cutting edge soon found alt-country to be passe, as indie culture became an Internet-infused hipster culture.
“The Pride of History”: Post-punk and the Aesthetics of Post-modernity
Historical Theory and Methods through Popular Music, 1970–2000, 2017
This chapter examines the explosion-implosion of rock and roll narratives characterizing the post... more This chapter examines the explosion-implosion of rock and roll narratives characterizing the post-punk era: 1978–1984. Through the theory of post-modernism, we see post-punk as a related aspect of the undermining of narratives in the wake decolonization, the Civil Rights era, and the rise of neoliberal globalization. Artists utilized the freedom of punk rock—which had undermined older rock and roll narratives—and began creating music that challenged the conventions of the very meaning of rock and roll: ranging from political stances, an embrace of noise or industrial sounds, the mobilization of twentieth-century avant-garde expressions, and even the ironic embrace of the emerging multinational corporate framework born of the shift from Keynesian economics to neoliberalism in the late 1970s.
“Feels Blind”: Counter-Hegemony in Alternative Rock During the Reagan/Thatcher Era
Historical Theory and Methods through Popular Music, 1970–2000, 2017
This chapter examines the rise of alternative music as a challenge to mainstream hegemony. Born o... more This chapter examines the rise of alternative music as a challenge to mainstream hegemony. Born out of college rock, jangle pop, post-punk, and hardcore punk, alternative music evolved through the 1980s by constructing its own structures including record stores, college radio, and the spirit of “doing it yourself.” Alongside an independent infrastructure, alternative rock produced a counter-hegemonic, non-mainstream approach to music—ranging from political engagement to aesthetics. Ironically, this music from the margins eventually became the hegemonic music in the late 1980s and early 1990s, reflecting the way mainstream culture regenerates its marketing power through the incorporation of alternative cultures.
Hiraeth: The Celtic Moment in 1980s Alternative Rock
Historical Theory and Methods through Popular Music, 1970–2000, 2017
This chapter examines a moment in which the bands U2, Big Country, and the Alarm, from Ireland, S... more This chapter examines a moment in which the bands U2, Big Country, and the Alarm, from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, respectively, expressed various forms of nationalistic resistance to the neoliberal order central to the socio-economic agenda of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Different in scope, these nationalisms reflect the fundamental critique found in 1980s Britain and Ireland. As such, this chapter seeks to recontextualize the music of these artists within the Celtic world, highlighting in particular the complex and nuanced expressions of cultural nationalism found in the music of these artists.
“Who Will Survive in America?”: Gil Scott-Heron, the Black Radical Tradition, and the Critique of Neoliberalism
This article examines the rise of neoliberalism through the work of Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron’... more This article examines the rise of neoliberalism through the work of Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron’s spoken word traced the evolution of the various processes of modernity within the trajectory of U.S. history across the 1970s through the 2000s. In particular, he marked important turning points characterizing the rise of neoliberalism from the dusk of the civil rights/Black Power era to the dawn of President Reagan’s administration. His work marked the longue durée continuity of the black radical tradition, its critique of the processes of modernity (imperialism and colonialism, capitalism, the Atlantic slave trade, the enlightenment and nationalism), and the ongoing relevance of this epoch-spanning set of relationships characterizing culture and economics throughout American history.
James Baldwin Review, 2016
The 1965 debate at Cambridge University between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr., posed ... more The 1965 debate at Cambridge University between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr., posed the question: "Has the American Dream been achieved at the Expense of the American Negro?" Within the contours of the debate, Baldwin and Buckley wrestled with the ghosts of settler colonialism and slavery in a nation founded on freedom and equality. Framing the debate within the longue durée, this essay examines the deep cultural currents related to the American racial paradox at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Underscoring the changing language of white resistance against black civil rights, the essay argues that the Baldwin and Buckley debate anticipated the ways the U.S. would address racial inequality in the aftermath of the civil rights era and the dawn of neoliberalism in the 1970s.
“Have you understood anything I’ve said?”: The Dick Cavett Show , Jimi Hendrix, and the framing of the black counterculture in 1969
The Sixties, 2012
This article examines the role of Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s as a vessel of the Black Atlanti... more This article examines the role of Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s as a vessel of the Black Atlantic, what Paul Gilroy describes as the counterculture to modernity. Placed against the backdrop of The Dick Cavett Show, a newly created talk show in 1969 hosted by the white liberal Dick Cavett, this article explores the dialogue between host and guitarist in an attempt to trace the longue durée assumptions and ideological patterns of modernity and its late 1960s repercussions at the end of the American Civil Rights movement. Using the theories of Gilroy, James Baldwin, Raymond Williams, and Jacques Attali, I outline how the two visits of Hendrix on The Dick Cavett Show were analogous to larger patterns coursing through American society as popular institutions such as television and film formed important bulwarks against not only the countercultural ideas of the 1960s, but the more radical sets of ideas that increasingly took aim at the institutional nature of US racial capitalism and modernity itself. While The Dick Cavett Show embodied the assimilation of aspects of cultural radicalism, the show also offered lessons on how institutions such as television used cultural radicalism as both a point of sale and a reflective other in rehabilitating the frayed edges of American truth-constructing processes. As a guest, Hendrix often provided answers to Cavett’s questions which frequently opened doors to implicitly anti-systemic – or anti-modern – discussions. As a host, Cavett’s reactions can be read as parrying these blows, using comedy and his persona as a Midwestern straight white man as the blunting instrument.
The 1965 debate at Cambridge University between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr., posed ... more The 1965 debate at Cambridge University between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr., posed the question: " Has the American Dream been achieved at the Expense of the American Negro? " Within the contours of the debate, Baldwin and Buckley wrestled with the ghosts of settler colonialism and slavery in a nation founded on freedom and equality. Framing the debate within the longue durée, this essay examines the deep cultural currents related to the American racial paradox at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Underscoring the changing language of white resistance against black civil rights, the essay argues that the Baldwin and Buckley debate anticipated the ways the U.S. would address racial inequality in the aftermath of the civil rights era and the dawn of neoliberalism in the 1970s.
This paper examines the violent delusions anchoring U.S. history rooted in its settler colonial a... more This paper examines the violent delusions anchoring U.S. history rooted in its settler colonial and slavery-Jim Crow past. It argues that violence is triggered when these delusions of white supremacy and autonomy over people of color are challenged.
This article examines the rise of neoliberalism through the work of Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron’... more This article examines the rise of neoliberalism through the work of Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron’s spoken word traced the evolution of the various processes of modernity within the trajectory of U.S. history across the 1970s through the 2000s. In particular, he marked important turning points characterizing the rise of neoliberalism from the dusk of the civil rights/Black Power era to the dawn of President Reagan’s administration. His work marked the longue durée continuity of the black radical tradition, its critique of the processes of modernity (imperialism and colonialism, capitalism, the Atlantic slave trade, the enlightenment and nationalism), and the ongoing relevance of this epoch-spanning set of relationships characterizing culture and economics throughout American history.
Journal of the West 52, no. 1 (Winter 2013)
The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture
This article examines the role of Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s as a vessel of the Black Atlanti... more This article examines the role of Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s as a vessel of the Black Atlantic, what Paul Gilroy describes as the counterculture to modernity. Placed against the backdrop of The Dick Cavett Show, a newly created talk show in 1969 hosted by the white liberal Dick Cavett, this article explores the dialogue between host and guitarist in an attempt to trace the longue durée assumptions and ideological patterns of modernity and its late 1960s repercussions at the end of the American Civil Rights movement. Using the theories of Gilroy, James Baldwin, Raymond Williams, and Jacques Attali, I outline how the two visits of Hendrix on The Dick Cavett Show were analogous to larger patterns coursing through American society as popular institutions such as television and film formed important bulwarks against not only the countercultural ideas of the 1960s, but the more radical sets of ideas that increasingly took aim at the institutional nature of US racial capitalism and modernity itself. While The Dick Cavett Show embodied the assimilation of aspects of cultural radicalism, the show also offered lessons on how institutions such as television used cultural radicalism as both a point of sale and a reflective other in rehabilitating the frayed edges of American truth-constructing processes. As a guest, Hendrix often provided answers to Cavett’s questions which frequently opened doors to implicitly anti-systemic – or anti-modern – discussions. As a host, Cavett’s reactions can be read as parrying these blows, using comedy and his persona as a Midwestern straight white man as the blunting instrument.
Southern California Quarterly, 2014
James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough, 2nd ed., 2010
The Harder They Come brings to the jaded metropolitan taste a new exoticism: the black Caribbean,... more The Harder They Come brings to the jaded metropolitan taste a new exoticism: the black Caribbean, which has previously only figured as a passive backdrop in James Bond pictures-providing pot plantation, black gangster villains, or maneating crabs upon demand by Salzman and Broccoli. Now it begins to come alive on the screen as it is coming alive in the headlines: the reality of a povertystricken black half-nation (dozens of islands, each in effect a country to itself, strung out over a distance of some 2,000 miles) whose main "products" are sun and sea, and whose main crop, now that the monoculture of cane sugar is dying under the price competition of French and German and American sugar-beets, is another monoculture: tourism, which brings in its train the identical social dislocations of the old plantation system (Callenbach, 1973(Callenbach, -1974.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ornette Coleman's free jazz and his theorizing of his music in... more In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ornette Coleman's free jazz and his theorizing of his music intersected with the means and methods of Europe's Situationists in their early phase (1958-1962).
SOON TO BE A MONOGRAPH! Be on the lookout for a revised version of this MA Thesis, published by U... more SOON TO BE A MONOGRAPH! Be on the lookout for a revised version of this MA Thesis, published by University Press of Mississippi (2026). Titled: An Uncompromised Freedom: The Culture of Modernity and Free Jazz at the Dawn of Liberation, 1950s-1980s.
Drafts by Daniel R McClure
This talk examines the historical context of women's autonomy and freedom in the United States, s... more This talk examines the historical context of women's autonomy and freedom in the United States, specifically situating the era of freedom between the 1970s through 2022 within the longue duree of U.S. history.
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Books by Daniel R McClure
Daniel Robert McClure's book follows the interaction between culture and economics during the transition from Keynesianism in the mid-1960s to the triumph of neoliberalism at the dawn of the 1980s. From the 1965 debate between William F. Buckley and James Baldwin, through the pages of BusinessWeek and Playboy, to the rise of exploitation cinema in the 1970s, McClure tracks the increasingly shared perception by white males that they had "lost" their long-standing rights and that a great neoliberal reckoning might restore America's repressive racial, sexual, gendered, and classed foundations in the wake of the 1960s.
“Winter in America is terrific, moving ably between culture and political economy to mount a sophisticated consideration of race and gender within neoliberalism, all while taking the long view, in contrast to so many accounts supposing that 1972 marked the start something fully new. As monuments fall and we have a chance to rethink received wisdom, it offers the reader a journey that is both unpredictable and exciting.”
—David Roediger, author of The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class
“This is a dazzling tour de force and a sweeping and stimulating synthesis of politics, music, film, poetry, neoliberalism—and more. The cast of characters—James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, John Wayne, and Jayne Cortez, among others—is similarly expansive. It demonstrates the potency of what happens when American studies is executed expertly.”
—Gerald Horne, author of The Bittersweet Science: Racism, Racketeering, and the Political Economy of Boxing
"At a time when modern-day America's cultural and political divides are wider than ever, it's necessary to ask how the nation came to this painful point. In Winter in America, Daniel Robert McClure provides answers. This book frequently makes for uncomfortable reading, but honest reflection on painful facts isn't supposed to be easy. The past has much to teach us, and Winter in America is an essential guide."
—Jeff Guinn, New York Times bestselling author of Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson and The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
Papers by Daniel R McClure
Drafts by Daniel R McClure