Author: Sham Lal
Publisher: Rupa
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 535
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8171676057
Description
This collection of a hundred book reviews, from Sham Lal's well-known literary column 'Life and Letters', gives a vivid idea of how leading social scientists diagnose the ills of modernity. While going into the reasons which led to the collapse of all communist regimes, representing one side of the modernity project, it also explains why the triumphalism of liberalism, standing for the other side, will have a false ring so long as most poor societies are ruled by despots of various stripes and face insuperable difficulties in making even a moderately successful transition to a market economy.
The book discusses not only the pathologies of globalism and consumerism but also of the network society which is creating a new class of Pariah states. It also analyses the nature of the changes under way which are injecting contemporary thought with a new virus of nihilism which dismisses all options of truth, justice and freedom as partial, provisional and highly unstable.
The second part of the book deals with the work of over forty poets, playwrights and novelists. Their experience of the modern world is at a level much deeper than that of discursive thought, and they provide a necessary corrective to the erstaz cheer that is being spread by the proliferating networks of TV channels, and even more efficient means of mass entertainment and instant communication. In focusing on existential problems, the best spirits of the age seek to restore to the public the tragic vision of life which, despite its being an integral part of all old civilizations, is being blotted out by the increasing fret and fever of modern life.
Contents
Introduction
A MOST VIOLENT CENTURY
Inquest on An Era
The Future is Bad News
The Meaning of History
Interrogating the Past
When Reason Grows Cynical
Defective Genes
The Emperor had no Clothes
PATHOLOGY OF AFFLUENCE
Travels in Hyper-Reality
Under the Spell of Money
Pox Americana
Keeping America on Top
Benign or Sinister ?
New Brand of Pragmatism
HISTORY REBUFFS MARXISM
Lean Days for Marxism
Messianic Make-believe
A Defunct Ideology
A Trouble Spirit
The Tyranny of Facts
Hooked on the Future
Refuge in the Imaginary
Still Trapped in History
WHAT AILS MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY
No Exit from this Cage
Modernity in Distress
Not by Reason Alone Erosions of Identity
Ravages of Modernity
Nightmare of Reason
Reality Keeps Breaking in
Lost Coherences
Between Two Poles
On Slippery Ground
POLITICS, MEDIA, NATIONALISM AND WESTERN HAGEMONY
in a Jungle of Theories
Limits of the Possible
Liberty, Negative and Positive
In the Same Mire
Is the Media all Simulation?
Holes in the Argument
A Kafka in Reverse
Made in the West
The White Man's Burden
NEW CAPITALISM, CONSUMERISM, GLOBALISM AND THE NETWORK SOCIETY
Clearing Some Muddles
Development Dilemmas
Saving the Future
Where Options are Limited
Pathology of Globalisation
A Carnival of consumerism
The Info-tech Society
Pariahs of Network Society
SOPS FOR THE THREATENED SELF AND AESTHETIC THEORY
Modern Identity
Software for the Mind
A Ghost of a World
In the Same Trap
Art Against Society
Who is afraid of Kafka?
No Balm for Bruised Egos
A Touch of Megalomania
Keeping Banality at Bay
Let Us Keep Smiling
FORMS OF MODERNS SENSIBILITY : SOME POETS PLAYWRIGHTS AND NOVELISTS
A Stain upon the Silence
Not So Impersonal
Phony Redemption
Sweeney in the Dock
All Passion Spent
Poetic Counter-reality
Naasty Little Wrrrats
The Horror of Vietnam
The Man Behind the Mask
The Panic Subsists
A Bad Dream
All Questions and No Answers
Re-evaluating Thomas Mann
Low-down on Brecht
After the Apocalypse
A Hard Looked at Sarrre
A Volumntary Exile
Reconciling the Irreconcilable
The Shadow is Always There
In a Twilit World
Appearance and Reality
Farewell to Poetry
Dostoevsky's World
Death of a Poet
Above the Noise of Time
The Torment of Language
Words in the Desert
Remembering Paz
Parables and Puzzles
A World Gone Berserk
A Cure for Amnesia
On a Question Mark
The Day it Ran out of Gas
On All Fours
Oranges and Lemons
Down to Worm-Size
Poems of Disgust
Two Contrasting Playwrights
Meet the Other K
Masks, Identities, Cliches
The Bread of Exile
With a Sad Heart