Synopses & Reviews
At a time when Americas faculties of taste and judgment—along with the sense of the sacred and shameful—have become utterly vacant, Rochelle Gurstein delivers an important and troubling warning. Covering landmark developments in Americas modern culture and law, she charts the demise of what was dismissively called “gentility” in the face of First Amendment triumphs for journalists, sex educators, and novelists—from Margaret Sangers advocacy of birth control to Judge Woolseys celebrated defense of Ulysses. Weaving together a study of the legal debates over obscenity and free speech with a cultural study of the critics and writers who framed the issues, Gurstein offers a trenchant reconsideration of the sacred value of privacy.
Synopsis
Arthur Herman explains how the conviction of civilization's inevitable end has become part of the modern Western imagination. He shows how the non-Romantic thinkers who became obsessed by the image of their civilization's demise paved the way for more radical "cultural pessimists" such as Nietzsche and Du Bois by casting doubt on the ability of Western civilization to renew itself and solve its own problems.
Once the wells of European self-confidence were poisoned, a new generation celebrated the unleashing of sexual desire, racial power, violence, and cruelty as new forms of "authenticity". Fascism, communism, black power, and radical environmentalism all drew on the same set of declinist assumptions, becoming part of the twentieth century's anti-Western legacy.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [309]-345) and index.
About the Author
Rochelle Gurstein, professor of history at the Bard Graduate Center, lives in New York City.