Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Desire and Fate

Desire and Fate

Rieff, David
Banville, John

Paperback

PhilosophyLetters & EssaysGeneral Sociology

Publisher Price: $24.00

ISBN10: 1912475383
ISBN13: 9781912475384
Publisher: Eris
Published: Jan 14 2025
Pages: 260
Weight: 0.50
Height: 1.00 Width: 4.90 Depth: 7.60
Language: English

Ours is an ill-mannered society that wears those bad manners as a badge not just of its moral rectitude but of its millenarian ethical ambitions. At the same time, in no society in recent memory have people been so easily affronted.

At a time when political writing and cultural criticism have come to be dominated by an insipid and unthinking moralism, David Rieff's essays offer a bracing antidote. As well as being one of the English-speaking world's most perceptive commentators on global politics, Rieff has in recent years been one of its most courageous and outspoken critics of the pathologies of identity politics--in particular, its grossly simplistic understanding of what it means to belong to a culture or a community, its fundamental failure to grasp the real value of the creative arts, and its increasing disregard for due process and freedom of expression.

The essays that appear in Desire and Fate serve both as a crucial record of and a fierce protest against these developments. Covering topics as diverse as censorship in contemporary publishing, the cultural ubiquity of the notion of trauma, and the future of democracy on a global level, they are all characterised by an incisive intelligence and a refreshing lack of wishful thinking. Together they confirm Rieff's status as an indispensable writer and thinker.

1 different editions

Also available

Also from

Rieff, David

View All

Also in

Letters & Essays

View All