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The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 1995
294 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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345 people want to read
About the author
Todd Gitlin
47 books51 followersTodd Gitlin was an American writer, sociologist, communications scholar, novelist, poet, and not very private intellectual. He was professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 5, 2022
Publishers Weekly
Although these two studies look at political correctness from opposite poles, both authors exhort us to replace polemics with rational thought. Cheney, former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, discusses postmodern thinking in academia, the arts, the media, and our legal system. She shows how fuzzy logic has weakened the standards of objectivity, pointing out as examples English and sociology faculty members who attack the scientific method and scholarly journals filled with ideologically slanted articles.
Gitlin (The Sixties, Bantam, 1987) examines the question in a broader social context, believing it has been overblown by conservatives. He also criticizes liberals for abandoning their leadership role in the fight for equal rights for all. Conservatives are now the cultural arbiters, and special-interest groups from both camps are engaging in futile power struggles while the nation limps along without a sense of mission.
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Booklist
The author, a well-known cultural critic and author of The Sixties (1987), focuses on the politics of textbook adoption in Oakland, California, in the early 1990s. He sees this process as a microcosm of the ways in which the public debate of issues generates more heat than light.
The textbooks under consideration, written by a well-known multiculturalist and former leftist activist, were attacked as racist; the charges, made by people who were former activists themselves, were accompanied by a level of acrimony and rage out of all proportion to the subject at hand.
Meanwhile, Gitlin notes, the larger issue, the fact that state funding of education has been repeatedly slashed, goes undebated. Widening his discussion, Gitlin goes on to talk about the decline of the Left, whose preoccupation with the needs of select "identities" and "cultures" has caused the movement to squander its energy on petty turf wars.
He also argues that the Right, formerly associated with privileged interests, now claims to speak for the common good and has parlayed this image into considerable political clout.
Gitlin calls for a return to consensus building in this lucid, eloquent, and persuasive book, which seeks to move us out of the current climate of bitterness and hypersensitivity and toward a more reasoned debate of our most pressing social problems.
Joanne Wilkinson
Although these two studies look at political correctness from opposite poles, both authors exhort us to replace polemics with rational thought. Cheney, former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, discusses postmodern thinking in academia, the arts, the media, and our legal system. She shows how fuzzy logic has weakened the standards of objectivity, pointing out as examples English and sociology faculty members who attack the scientific method and scholarly journals filled with ideologically slanted articles.
Gitlin (The Sixties, Bantam, 1987) examines the question in a broader social context, believing it has been overblown by conservatives. He also criticizes liberals for abandoning their leadership role in the fight for equal rights for all. Conservatives are now the cultural arbiters, and special-interest groups from both camps are engaging in futile power struggles while the nation limps along without a sense of mission.
---
Booklist
The author, a well-known cultural critic and author of The Sixties (1987), focuses on the politics of textbook adoption in Oakland, California, in the early 1990s. He sees this process as a microcosm of the ways in which the public debate of issues generates more heat than light.
The textbooks under consideration, written by a well-known multiculturalist and former leftist activist, were attacked as racist; the charges, made by people who were former activists themselves, were accompanied by a level of acrimony and rage out of all proportion to the subject at hand.
Meanwhile, Gitlin notes, the larger issue, the fact that state funding of education has been repeatedly slashed, goes undebated. Widening his discussion, Gitlin goes on to talk about the decline of the Left, whose preoccupation with the needs of select "identities" and "cultures" has caused the movement to squander its energy on petty turf wars.
He also argues that the Right, formerly associated with privileged interests, now claims to speak for the common good and has parlayed this image into considerable political clout.
Gitlin calls for a return to consensus building in this lucid, eloquent, and persuasive book, which seeks to move us out of the current climate of bitterness and hypersensitivity and toward a more reasoned debate of our most pressing social problems.
Joanne Wilkinson
October 29, 2016
This book was referenced in another book I'd recently read, and it seemed intriguing: written in 1995 amidst the "science wars", the "PC wars", and so forth, how would the "culture wars" of that time relate to the political strife now (fall 2016)?
Very much so. Very, very much so. There are passages, almost entire paragraphs, that you could lift from the book and you wouldn't be able to tell (minus one or two references) if they had been written then or now, particularly re: white (and, particularly, white male) anger, frustration, and resentment (regardless of how you view that) and the political capitalization of that by conservative political power. (To the point that Trump is now making the Republican party the de facto white identify party.)
Overall, the book is a criticism and call away from identity politics, and a call toward the (re)establishment of a common Left. I'm not sure if that is a project who's time has come, though I don't see what other (even passably good) options exist.
Very much so. Very, very much so. There are passages, almost entire paragraphs, that you could lift from the book and you wouldn't be able to tell (minus one or two references) if they had been written then or now, particularly re: white (and, particularly, white male) anger, frustration, and resentment (regardless of how you view that) and the political capitalization of that by conservative political power. (To the point that Trump is now making the Republican party the de facto white identify party.)
Overall, the book is a criticism and call away from identity politics, and a call toward the (re)establishment of a common Left. I'm not sure if that is a project who's time has come, though I don't see what other (even passably good) options exist.
August 11, 2020
Published twenty-five years ago and yet still relevant. Unfortunately.
July 28, 2019
Best book I've ever read on the self-destructiveness of identity group politics to Ds, Rs and the nation as a whole. And the author is a 'progressive' to boot. Written in 1995 it is just as current as a page from today's events and political non-discourse. Simple, concise and direct read.
August 10, 2013
Great overview of the culture wars, written in the middle of them!
February 20, 2022
Academic, dense, tendentious, turgid, boring! He could have made the same point in a long Op-Ed in The New York Times! (Maybe he did.) A book was unwarranted.
December 26, 2024
I suppose not a tremendous amount has fundamentally changed since 1995. Excellent book with a great, common sense call to action.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews