The World Turned Inside Out American Thought and Culture at the End of the 20th Century

by Livingston, James

• ISBN13: 9780742535411
• ISBN10: 074253541X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-16
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

The World Turned Inside Out explores American thought and culture in the formative moment of the late-20th century, in the aftermath of the fabled Sixties. The overall argument here is that the tendencies and sensibilities we associate with that earlier moment of upheaval decisively shaped intellectual agendas and cultural practices_from the all-volunteer Army to the cartoon politics of Disney movies_in the 1980s and 90s. By this accounting, the so-called Reagan Revolution was not only, or even mainly, a conservative event. By the same accounting, the Left, having seized the commanding heights of higher education, was never in danger of losing the so-called culture wars. At the end of the 20th century, the argument goes, the USA was much less conservative than it had been in 1975.The book takes supply-side economics and _South Park_ equally seriously. It treats Freddy Kreuger, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Ronald Reagan as comparable cultural icons.

Author Biography

James Livingston is professor of history at Rutgers University.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Preface: The World Elsewhere Is Not	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Chronology	p. xix
"From Dusk to Dawn:" Origins and Effects of the Reagan Revolution	p. 1
The Supply Side	p. 2
The Disregard for Capital	p. 7
Conservatism Old and New	p. 10
God, Family, Markets	p. 12
Why Is There Still Socialism in the United States?	p. 17
"Tenured Radicals" in the Ivory Tower: The Great Transformation of Higher Education	p. 21
Postindustrial Intellect	p. 24
From Left to Right, What Is to Be Done?	p. 26
Race, Class, and Gender	p. 29
Disuniting America?	p. 32
Reuniting America?	p. 34
The Creators and Constituents of the "Postmodern Condition"	p. 37
The Geographies of the Postmodern	p. 37
Semiotic Subversion	p. 40
The Wingspan of Feminism	p. 43
Gender Trouble	p. 48
Culture Wars on the Left	p. 50
"Signs of Signs:" Watching the End of Modernity at the Cineplex	p. 55
Reading for the Ending	p. 55
Big Movies, Big Ideas	p. 57
The Cultural Vicinity of The Matrix	p. 60
Generic Panic	p. 62
Experience and Explanation at the Cineplex	p. 66
Cartoon Politics	p. 71
Where's Dad?	p. 74
"Angels in America:" Technologies of Desire and Recognition	p. 79
Cartoon Politics, Again	p. 79
Excremental Visions	p. 84
Apocalypse Now?	p. 89
The Limit of Realism	p. 92
Musical Endings	p. 93
Hip-Hop Nation	p. 97
The Technologies of Desire	p. 100
The Ending of the "American Century"	p. 105
The American Century Revisited	p. 105
The Economic Logics of Globalization	p. 106
The Open Door World	p. 110
Vietnam Syndrome	p. 113
Another Country in Another Century	p. 115
Whose Ending?	p. 118
"Virtual Sanctuaries": Globalization and the New Terrorist Movements	p. 122
Sympathy for the Devil: The Rationality of Terrorism	p. 127
Coda: Keep Arguing	p. 133
Appendix: Their Great Depression and Ours	p. 137
Bibliographic Essay	p. 153
Index	p. 173
About the Author	p. 181
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