ABSTRACT
Neoliberalism has an almost universal usage within the contemporary left. This usage has become so pervasive that it has become an almost meaningless signifier. As a term, counterculture has particular associations with the hippy culture of the 1960s whilst also having a strong sense of belonging to the New Left and through that to the civil rights struggle, the anti-war movement and the birth of feminism. The counterculture of the 1960s was associated with drug use, music and dropping out of the system but also fashion and lifestyle. Crucial to understanding modernity is the concept of transgression. The bourgeois world is one of production, it is one of work organised through economic reason. This chapter discusses the development of a bohemian aesthetic in post-war America. It also shows how the aesthetic developed against the rationality of modernity, typified by the corporate organisation.
