Walter Benn Michaels

Walter Benn Michaels (born 1948) is an American literary theorist and author whose areas of research include American literature (particularly 19th-century to 20th-century), critical theory, identity politics, and visual arts.

Known for challenging the "prevailing trends of postmodernist theory," Michaels has produced works connecting postmodernism, neoliberal capitalism, and socioeconomic inequality. Two of his best-known books are Our America: Nativism, Modernism and Pluralism (1995) and The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History (2004) —the latter being adopted from his 2001 essay of the same name. Michaels argues that there is a major disconnect between what neoliberalism is purportedly dedicated to — the equality of people’s various identities — and the economic inequality produced by capitalism, while postmodernism makes it impossible to criticize such outcomes as choices:

Books 1988. The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism. University of California Press: Berkeley. 1995. Our America: Nativism, Modernism and Pluralism. Durham: Duke University Press. 2004. The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. . Lay summary. 2006. The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. New York: Metropolitan. Introduction. 2015. The Beauty of a Social Problem: Photography, Autonomy, Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lay summary. 2023. With Adolph Reed, No Politics but Class Politics. London: Eris Publishing. .

Interviews "Let Them Eat Diversity" (Jacobin, Winter 2011).