A radical new history of a dangerous idea
Post-Modernity is
the creative destruction that has shattered our present times into
fragments. It dynamited modernism which had dominated the western
world for most of the 20th century. Post-modernism stood for
everything modernism rejected: fun, exuberance, irresponsibility. But
beneath its glitzy surface, post-modernism had a dirty secret: it was
the fig leaf for a rapacious new kind of capitalism. It was also the
forcing ground of the 'post truth', by means of which western values
got turned upside down.
But where do these
ideas come from and how have they impacted on the world? In his
brilliant history of a dangerous idea, Stuart Jeffries tells a
narrative that starts in the early 1970s and continue to today.
He tells this
history through a riotous gallery that includes David Bowie, the
Ipod, Frederic Jameson, the demolition of Pruit-Igoe, Madonna,
Post-Fordism, Jeff Koon's 'Rabbit', Deleuze and Guattari, the Nixon
Shock, The Bowery series, Judith Butler, Las Vegas, Margaret
Thatcher, Grand Master Flash, I Love Dick, the RAND Corporation, the
Sex Pistols, Princess Diana, the Musee D'Orsay, Grand Theft Auto,
Perry Anderson, Netflix, 9/11
We are today
scarcely capable of conceiving politics as a communal activity
because we have become habituated to being consumers rather than
citizens. Politicians treat us as consumers to whom they must
deliver. Can we do anything else than suffer from buyer's remorse?