Right-Wing Culture in Contemporary Capitalism

Mathias Nilges

ISBN 10: 1350251305 / ISBN 13: 9781350251304

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, GB, 2021

About this Item

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.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781350251304

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Right-Wing Culture in Contemporary Capitalism
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, GB
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350251305
• ISBN 13: 9781350251304
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 308 grams

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Authors

Mathias Nilges is Associate Professor of English at St. Francis Xavier University, Canada. He has co-edited the books Literary Materialisms (2013), Marxism and the Critique of Value (2014), and The Contemporaneity of Modernism (2016).

Chris O'Kane is Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA.

Werner Bonefeld teaches in the Department of Politics at the University of York, UK. Before coming to York he taught at the Universities of Frankfurt and Edinburgh. He has conducted post-graduate seminars on critical theory at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, the Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, adn at Universidad de Buenos Aires (2008). His work contributed to the development of the internationally recognised Open Marxism school.