Intellectuals in the Society of Spectacle - Softcover

Britt, Christopher; Subirats, Eduardo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3030731081 ISBN 13: 9783030731083

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

This book reveals the sense in which our postmodern societies are characterized by the obscene absence of the intellectual.  The modern intellectual--who had once been associated with humanism and enlightenment―has in our day been replaced by media stars, talking heads, and technical experts. At issue is the ongoing crisis of democracy, under the aegis of the société du spectacle and its vast networks of politically-induced idiocy, industrially-produced biocide, and militarily-provoked genocide.  Spectacle fills the resulting moral and intellectual vacuum with electronic technologies of control, punishment, and destruction.  This postmodern tyranny reduces intelligence to mechanistic, positivist, and grammatological models of inquiry, while increasing the segmentation, fragmentation, and dissolution of human existence. The apotheosis of the spectacle explains the intellectual void that lies at the heart of our postmodern decadence; it also accounts for theneed to recuperate the humanist values of enlightenment promoted by the modern intellectual tradition.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christopher Britt is Professor of Spanish at The George Washington University, USA.

Eduardo Subirats is Professor of Spanish at New York University, USA.

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“Intellectuals in a Society of Spectacle outlines the history, psychology, and logic by which Western civilization is realizing all the nightmares of Orwell, in which war will indeed be peace, and slavery indeed be freedom. The spectacle, which we enact by pretending to watch, is an epochal sacrifice of knowledge to power. Conceived over decades in universities in the collapse of Western triumphalism, the spectacle of culture war is a sadomasochistic Tarantella of self-denying humanists and omnipotent technocrats in a charnel-house of voluntary servitude.”

―Paul Fenn, co-author of Enlightenment in an Age of Destruction (Palgrave Macmillan 2018)

This book reveals the sense in which our postmodern societies are characterized by the obscene absence of the intellectual.  The modern intellectual--who had once been associated with humanism and enlightenment―has in our day been replaced by media stars, talking heads, and technical experts. At issue is the ongoing crisis of democracy, under the aegis of the société du spectacle and its vast networks of politically-induced idiocy, industrially-produced biocide, and militarily-provoked genocide.  Spectacle fills the resulting moral and intellectual vacuum with electronic technologies of control, punishment, and destruction.  This postmodern tyranny reduces intelligence to mechanistic, positivist, and grammatological models of inquiry, while increasing the segmentation, fragmentation, and dissolution of human existence. The apotheosis of the spectacle explains the intellectual void that lies at the heart of our postmodern decadence; it also accounts for the need to recuperate the humanist values of enlightenment promoted by the modern intellectual tradition.

Christopher Britt is Professor of Spanish at The George Washington University, USA.

Eduardo Subirats is Professor of Spanish at NewYork University, USA.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 3030731081
• ISBN 13: 9783030731083
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 172
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Springer Nature Customer Service Center GmbH; ProductSafety@springernature.com; ; Europaplatz 3,69115 Heidelberg, Germany; Heidelberg; 69115; Deutschland