The End Of Utopia: Politics And Culture In An Age Of Apathy [Hardcover]

Russell Jacoby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 1999

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 lambastes the current practitioners 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 have addressed 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.

From Kirkus Reviews

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 doesnt 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 arein his minddead 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. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (May 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465020003
• ISBN-13: 978-0465020003
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,037,845 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A cogent, incisive analysis of left/liberal exhaustion, January 1, 2000

By 

Mr Mondo - See all my reviews

This review is from: The End Of Utopia: Politics And Culture In An Age Of Apathy (Hardcover)

This book should be on your short list of "must-read" material.

Russell Jacoby's willingness to think critically and his trust that his audience is willing to do the same inevitably result in the finest cultural and intellectual criticism available in the United States.

This book is no exception and is an important read for anyone who wonders if there's a better way available to our society. Before we can answer that question, the dead wood of the last century must be cleared away.

Jacoby does so by pointing out how thoroughly enervated left/liberal political and social thought has become. Jacoby's conclusion is frightening in its implications -- leftists and liberals have essentially given up on the complex task of forging a new, better future for all.

In place of that utopian impulse, leftists and liberals have substituted cynicism, academic careerism and outright moral defeat. No longer certain that they can change the world, they seem intent on obscuring their total surrender to the existing sociopolitical milieu.

Jacoby's book is brief, but does a great job of documenting this shift in liberal/leftist thought from ardent desire to improve society to abject acceptance of what exists. Western societies need people who are willing to think on a grand scale about how the lives of people living in those societies can be improved. What the liberal/left now offers is an incoherent insistence that nothing can be improved, that all is simply rhetorical strategies designed to perpetuate systems of dominance and subjugation.

The society that is currently emerging from the turmoil of technological ferment desperately needs moral, political and intellectual leadership informed by a vision of a better future. In its current incarnation, left/liberal thought is incapable of providing that vision.

The frightening thing is that this tradition is probably the only one capable of conceiving and implementing social change that would make the new technology serve us rather than the other way around. Jacoby's book is a tough-minded call to arms for those of us who aren't ready to give up on humanity and don't believe that the market place is a mechanism that necessarily best adjudicates complex social interactions and promotes the values of a humane society -- equality, justice, peace and prosperity.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The death of politics and a prescription for its renewal., September 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The End Of Utopia: Politics And Culture In An Age Of Apathy (Hardcover)

Politics, as Russell Jacoby observes, has become boring. Hardly anyone talks about political ideas anymore. Where there is little talk, there is even less action. I have long believed that an effective left needs some kind of positive vision for the future. Changing society takes enormous energy and requires something more than a belief that a change "is the right thing to do," or that "it might do some good." This attitude leads to sporadic and half hearted efforts while those convinced they are creating a new world are capable of sustaining their passion over a lifetime while inspiring others along the way.

Nevertheless, a recognition of the left's loss of faith in its ability to create a better world has been missing, curiously so since such hopes have nourished it for over two centuries. For years I could find no mention of it anywhere. So my heart was ineffably gladdened when I stumbled onto The End of Utopia, a superlative work that focuses on this issue.

Russell Jacoby is a highly respected intellectual historian who made a splash a decade ago with the excellent and well received The Last Intellectuals. He is a brilliant writer with a biting wit, one of those rare people who can make the discussion of even the dullest writers interesting. His excoriation of current leftist theory is great fun. In a review in Dissent Magazine, George Scialabba commented that Jacoby is "a cultural hygeinist, scouring verbal plaque and conceptual decay with his high-powered electric-sarcastic drill."

Jacoby's thesis is that the left needs to be open to the possibility of utopian thinking. By utopian, Jacoby isn't referring to an attempt to create a perfect world, but that we can hope "that the future could fundamentally surpass the present." His primary focus is the botch that contemporary leftist theory has become without it.

He is perhaps best when reviewing multiculturism. While agreeing with the basic premise that we need to be more inclusive of racial and ethnic groups, he derides multiculturism's pretenses of radicalism. He points out that we are becoming more culturally uniform, not diverse. Everyone buys the same goods, looks at the same TV shows and movies, "pursue the same activities and have the same desires -- more or less -- for success." There is, moreover, no vision inherent in multiculturism. Its efforts are primarily directed toward getting its people more power with everyone wanting "a bigger piece of the same action," suggesting "patronage more than revolution," leading people to specialize "in marginalization to up their market value." The radical pretenses of multiculturism "might be characterized as jargon attached to an air compressor." Ultimately, it assumes that the future will be like the present, only with more options.

Jacoby is also deeply concerned with the left's abandonment of universal values in favor of the local and particular, the tendency to aestheticize reality and the inability to make moral judgments. This avowed relativism often makes it difficult for the left to say anything significant. Denying the objectivity of truth, leftist theorists never get to the fundamental question of "what is and what should be." In short, the left never gets around to describing what sort of future we should be trying to create.

No reviewer questions Jacoby's brilliance as an intellectual historian, or his astuteness in revealing inane writing, excessive theorizing and self-promotion. Still, few are receptive to promoting an openness to utopian theory either. The most common criticism hurled at Jacoby comes from the McCarthy era, when being a good intellectual required fervent anti-communism which often equated communism with whatever was going on in Nazi Germany.

Yet, if there is any lesson to be gained from the great villains of the Twentieth Century, it would have to be that it is not wise to give absolute power to a single ruler, that democratic checks and balances are sound politics. The cold war engendered a herculean effort to equate totalitarianism with utopian ideas. Jacoby walks us through the history of the cold war's blackening of utopian theory, rightly observing that any connection with Nazi Germany is highly tenous and that the Stalinist moment was an aberration when viewed in the entirety of utopian ideas. Certainly, there should be little difficulty for future utopians to heed the dangers of omnipotent dicatators. It's hard to imagine any group, on the left at least, being attracted to that.

Only faith in the possibility of creating a better world can create sufficient energy to compete against the relentless forces of money, power and inertia. When there is a faith in a better world, the world is young again and all things are possible. When it is dormant, as now, we find ourselves mired in a dreadful cynism. Jacoby aptly quotes Bertold Brecht at the end, "Something is missing. A light has gone out. The world stripped of anticipation turns cold and grey."

Ultimately, we are responsible for the world we create and no generation gets a free pass. Currently, we need emotional courage, the willingness to reincoporate a utopian vision into our thinking. Once we realize our desire for it, alternatives will begin to present themselves, and even if none existed, we would eventually will them into being. The End of Utopia is a wonderful start, well written, insightful, frequently humorous and highly recommended

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clearly presented ideas, September 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The End Of Utopia: Politics And Culture In An Age Of Apathy (Paperback)

As a former student of Professor Jacoby at UCLA, I felt that this was a wonderful book explaining his philosophy on the fall of Utopian thinking. His knowledge on the subject comes through as clearly as it did in class. This should be a must read for anyone interested in why we no longer dream of a perfect society to exist in the future, and have become content with something that falls dramatically short of it.