Dreams of Millennium: Report from a Culture on the Brink - Hardcover

Kingwell, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 057119902X ISBN 13: 9780571199020

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1997

Synopsis

The year 2000 is fast approaching and a lot of people are worried about what the future holds. Mark Kingwell, uninterested in prognostication, looks instead to the present and backward to link millennial anxiety to other apocalyptic periods in history. In every previous millennial (and often centennial) finale there has been both a crisis of leadership and a penchant for cross-dressing. Conspiracy theories, distrust of government, renewed religiosity, and sex and gender flux are also symptomatic of end-times throughout recorded history.
Kingwell draws on pop culture (body-piercing, angel obsession, psychics fairs, "The X-Files," "Star Trek," "The Simpsons," Pulp Fiction), current events (the Ebola virus, Waco, the Unabomber), and historical parallels (decadence in 1890s Paris, self-flagellation in 1490s Florence, the Crusades) to show how millennial anxiety threatens to extinguish our faith in ourselves.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark Kingwell is a journalist and assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A quick, entertaining, often flippant guide to the zeitgeist. Kingwell (Philosophy/Univ. of Toronto) is interested in everything--``high'' and ``low'' culture alike. Thinkers and trends he covers range from the political theorist Michael Lind to the ``new'' leadership-training programs in business, from the apocalyptic environmental philosopher Thomas Homer-Dixon to an exhibition by psychics. Along the way, he offers some very interesting and at times witty observations, as in his pungent comment concerning leadership-studies guru Warren Bennis: ``His lessons are hoary with age yet presented with an air of breathless discovery.'' Unfortunately, Kingwell often flits from topic to topic, sometimes dealing with phenomena that seem to have little, if anything, to do with the coming millennium, e.g., a syndrome in which visitors to Jerusalem have messianic delusions. He is also prone to some silly generalizations. And while he has a refreshingly breezy journalistic style, Kingwell sometimes lapses into academic pretentiousness, such as describing tattooing (!) as ``perhaps the one remaining utopian gesture.'' Finally, despite his frequent tone of world-weary irony, he seems too eager to assign a host of phenomena to end-of-millennium yearning or anxiety, and to engage in reckless prophesying: ``We can anticipate scenes of mass hysteria and terror'' as the millennium approaches. Kingwell's jaundiced perspective may be traceable to his focus on thinkers who specialize in ``ivory tower'' theorizing or who reside at the cultural margins. While this makes for a great deal of eye-opening material, something essential seems missing: the hopes and anxieties of many in the Western world's middle class. These seem far more focused on diurnal family and economic issues than on the almost mythic third millennium, whose contours are still less clearly discernible than Kingwell thinks. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 057119902X
• ISBN 13: 9780571199020
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 372