The End Of Utopia: Politics And Culture In An Age Of Apathy - Softcover

Jacoby, Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465020011 ISBN 13: 9780465020010

Publisher: Basic Books, 2000

Synopsis

We are facing the end of politics altogether, Russell Jacoby argues in The End of Utopia. Political contestation is premised on people's capacity for offering competing visions of the future, but in a world that has run out of political ideas and no longer harbors any utopian visions, real political opposition is no longer possible. In particular, Jacoby traces the demise of liberal and leftist politics. Leftist intellectuals and critics no longer envision a different society, only a modified one. The left once dismissed the market as exploitative, but now honors it as rational and humane. The left used to disdain mass culture, but now celebrates it as rebellious. The left once rejected pluralism as superficial, but now resurrects pluralist ideas in the guise of multiculturalism.Ranging across a wide terrain of cultural and political phenomena,the end of the Cold War, the rise of multiculturalism, the acceptance of mass culture, the eclipse of independent intellectuals,Jacoby documents and laments a widespread retreat from the utopian spirit that has always been the engine for social and political change.

About this title

Review:

The near-total triumph of free market capitalism around the world has put a damper on utopian visions, leading many politicians and activists to believe that radical change is impossible, that at best one can hope for slight modifications of the status quo. For Russell Jacoby, this attitude is not so much the result of practicality as it is the product of exhaustion and he argues that, as a society, we can do much better. The End of Utopia is an uncompromising look at the intellectual caliber of late 20th-century liberal and leftist politics, particularly within the academy. He portrays the class of professional intellectuals as insiders adopting the pose of marginality and lambasts the current practicioners of "cultural studies" in particular for their tendency toward banal "analysis" of mass culture in tortured, jargon-laced prose. (In contrast, he holds up Dwight MacDonald, Theodor Adorno and Matthew Arnold as writers who could address mass culture in plain language yet with deep, critical intelligence.) And he proposes that multiculturalism may be little more than a last ditch attempt at differentiation within the one, dominant culture. "What is to be done?" he asks after cataloguing this state of affairs. "The question, routinely addressed to all critics, insists on a practicality inimical to utopianism. Nothing is to be done. Yet that does not mean nothing is to be thought or imagined or dreamed." The End of Utopia shows to what extent the dreams have been abandoned, with the means of rekindling them yet within grasp.

Synopsis:

A sharply critical look at the fate of liberal and leftist political thought and at the death of the utopian ideals that once fueled these politics. . In The End of Utopia, noted social critic and historian Russell Jacoby takes a sobering look at the future of politics and does not like what he sees. Jacoby points to the abandonment of utopian ideals that once sustained dissent and movements of social change; and he calls for writers and critics to reclaim a vision and backbone they are losing. We are facing the end of politics altogether, Russell Jacoby argues in The End of Utopia. Political contestation is premised on peoples capacity for offering competing visions of the future, but in a world that has run out of political ideas and no longer harbors any utopian visions, real political opposition is no longer possible. In particular, Jacoby traces the demise of liberal and leftist politics. Leftist intellectuals and critics no longer envision a different society, only a modified one. The left once dismissed the market as exploitative, but now honors it as rational and humane. The left used to disdain mass culture, but now celebrates it as rebellious.

The left once rejected pluralism as superficial, but now resurrects pluralist ideas in the guise of multiculturalism. Ranging across a wide terrain of cultural and political phenomenathe end of the Cold War, the rise of multiculturalism, the acceptance of mass culture, the eclipse of independent intellectualsJacoby documents and laments a widespread retreat from the utopian spirit that has always been the engine for social and political change.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0465020011
• ISBN 13: 9780465020010
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256