Why the Center Can't Hold: A Diagnosis of Puritanized America by Tom O'Neill.
Material type:
TextPublisher: Project Muse, Manufacturer: Project MUSE, Description: 1 online resource (xv, 347 pages)ISBN: 9780692725474Subject(s): Capitalism | Religion and sociology | United States -- Intellectual life -- 21st century | United States -- CivilizationGenre/Form: Electronic books. | Electronic books. Additional physical formats: Print version:: No titleDDC classification: 973.932 LOC classification: E169.12 | .O53 2016Online resources: Full text available: | Item type | Current library | Call number | URL | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
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eBook
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Digital Library
Resources in this library are accessible in digital format e.g. eBooks or eJournals accessible online. |
E169.12 .O53 2016 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Link to resource | Available |
Issued as part of book collections on Project MUSE.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-337) and index.
Our accelerating disinvestment in education -- The growing ascendance of the rich -- Our tenaciously expanding belief in force -- The sense nature can take whatever we dish out -- How the signs of incoherence cohere in pointing toward disintegration -- Skepticism about history -- Skepticism about beauty -- Skepticism about morality -- Skepticism about anything being known absolutely (absolute skepticism) -- "Fundamentalism will save us!" -- "God will save us from ourselves!" -- "The next election (or the one after that) will save us!" -- "I've decided to be a survivor!."
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"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." These words from Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" provide Why the Center Can't Hold with its organizing theme. And although Yeats was describing the grim atmosphere of post-World War I Europe, O'Neill regards the poem's pronouncements as eerily predictive of the state of the world as we are currently observing it. O'Neill takes them as predictive of the agency in particular of the United States--the "Center"--in bringing about in the world the more general chaos we are now observing (relative to various refugee and migrant crises, the emergence of sophisticated and even postmodern forms of militant and cyber terrorism, banking and other monetary crises, environmental catastrophes under the aegis of climate change, the defunding of public higher education, the persistence of virulent forms of racism and other types of intolerance, the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, the marginalisation and even outright elimination of human labor forces, etc.). O'Neill provides historical analyses that illuminate why this is the case, and he also asks what changes in the United States -- in its politics, in its socio-cultural formations, and in its beliefs and (supposedly common) values -- might help us to avoid the seemingly inevitable (and lamentable) destruction that lies ahead.
Description based on print version record.
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