Right-wing culture in contemporary capitalism : regression and hope in a time without future / Mathias Nilges.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nilges, Mathias, author.

Series:

Critical theory and the critique of society.

Critical theory and the critique of society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capitalism--Political aspects.

Capitalism.

Conservatism--Social aspects.

Conservatism.

Fascism.

Paternalism.

Right and left (Political science).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 201 pages).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Summary:

"Commentators across the political spectrum have argued that the future has been absorbed by an ever-expanding present to which we cannot imagine alternatives. The notion that we have lost the ability to imagine change-culturally, socially, and politically-has become one of the defining problems of our time. But what is the difference between the populist narratives of those who promise to solve this problem by returning us to a glorious past and those who promise to lead us into a glorious future? Often, this book argues, not very much at all. Revealing neo-authoritarianism and capitalist hyper-innovation as two sides of the same coin, Mathias Nilges shows that today's reactionaries and futurists both harness and profit from the same temporal crises of our present. Looking to design, popular culture, literature, and recent theoretical and political discussions, Nilges offers ways of understanding the re-emergence of familiar and disturbing forms of right-wing politics and culture (authoritarianism, paternalism, fascism) not as historical repetition but as dangerous consequences of the contradictions of capitalism today. Using critical theory, in particular the work of Ernst Bloch, this book recovers a politics and culture of hope, which it locates beyond a future that is colonized by capitalism and a past that becomes the mystical playground for the new Right:in that which was never allowed to be and thus demands realization."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Contents:

1. Introduction: All We Have Is Now

2. Looking Backward: N onsynchronism in the Long Now of Capitalism

2.1 The Long Now, A Crisis of Capitalist Temporality

2.2 The Temporal Demos Undone

2.3 The Dialectic of Aesthetic Form and Anticipatory Consciousness

2.4 Nonsynchronism and the Distribution of Time

2.5 Bloch Now: Tracing Hope in a Time of Crisis

2.6 The Untimeliness of Bloch: Utopian Thought and Critical Theory

3. The New Paternalism: Anti-Capitalism and Right-Wing Nostalgia

3.1 Why Anti-Postmodernism Now? Angry Young Men and the Desire for Fathers

3.2 Sentimentalism for Men, the Musty New Scent by Contemporary Capitalism

3.3 Right-Wing Agitation, Anti-Postmodernism, and Anti-Marxism

4. Mystifications or, Lumberjacks Without Forests

4.1 Identitarian Attacks on Identity Politics: A Right-Wing Veil for Capitalism's Contradictions

4.2 Fascism: Capitalist Crisis Management

4.3 Romantic Anti-Capitalism

4.4 Getting Back in Touch with the Homeland

5. Completing the Thought of the Past: Literature as Utopian Method

5.1 Hope: Material Hunger for What's Missing

5.2 "To Speak of the Unspeakable": The Novel as Utopian Thought

5.3 Occupy Dreaming: Decolonizing the Future.

ISBN:

9781350074095

1350074098

9781350074071

1350074071

OCLC:

1139967749