Description
Book SynopsisOne of our most incisive critics asks where the assault against the canons of Western culture has led us. Hartman calls for the restoration of literature to its place as the focus of thinking about culture and for the renewal of aesthetic education to help ensure the balance between art, culture, and politics.
Trade ReviewA complex and deeply-learned meditation about the possibilities of culture. -- John Axcelson, Columbia University The Wordsworth Circle In six tightly reasoned and broadly referenced chapters, Hartman explores the idea of culture, first attempting to define the word and then by exploring how the concept functions in a postmodern world. He makes the case that the purpose of culture is to reduce alienation, the sense of loss resulting from the change from agrarian to industrial society. Hartman sees Wordsworth as not only documenting the change but attempting to translate the value and sense of belonging of the agrarian into the industrial society. On the continent, Heidegger attempts to launch 'an original and originative thinking that will restore language to simplicity and human life to its unalienated place in nature.'... The reduction of the tension between multiculturalism, which does little 'to redeem the imaginative from abstraction,'and cultural identity, which redeems at the price of exclusiveness, is learning. An excellent resource for graduate collections. Choice
