An ill-spirited but perceptive blast at contemporary political
action, ideology, and theory. Jacoby (History/UCLA; Dogmatic
Wisdom: How the Culture Wars Divert Education and Distract America,
1994, etc.) argues that we have lost the conception of an absolute
goal, a vision of the good, that is necessary for change to take
place in society. Absent a belief that the world could be
different, it remains the same, and politics degenerates into an
uninspiring choice between the status quo and the even worse
options of the past. Moreover, the disappearance of utopian faith
corrupts personal as well as political life. The infatuation with
careerism among today's students, for example, reflects not an
economic collapse, but rather "the collapse of a belief in a future
that might be different." Whether change genuinely requires a
reference point outside current reality or can proceed
incrementally in reaction to it is debatable, but historically,
political dynamism has rested on claims of universal truths used as
battering rams against perceived injustices. Jacoby doesn't make
his point and then go forward, however; rather than espousing
revolution, he expends his energy attacking the insipid
intellectuals of the left who refuse to be revolutionaries. He
condemns the "anemic concepts and timid politics of liberal
multiculturalism," the "atrophy of current political thinking," and
the contemporary philosophers who "exchange truth for art
appreciation." Even those who agree with his criticisms will wonder
if this hyperbole is really the route to utopia. If Jacoby takes
his own argument seriously, is he better served by beating what are
- in his mind - dead horses or by making an effort to supply what
he believes we lack? Ultimately, this is an irritating book because
the valuable central point will surely be lost in the furor over a
critique that does not further the author's stated agenda. This
effort does not distance Jacoby from those he attacks. (Kirkus
Reviews)
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.
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