The Decline of Discourse: Reading, Writing, and Resistance in Postmodern CapitalismThis timely study focuses on the structural sources of the decline of public discourse. Agger approaches the problem of the "absent public" by developing the concepts of "literary political economy" and "literary hegemony." His probing analysis of the commodification process--driven by the political economy and the literary hegemony of academia and of popular culture--illuminates the decline of intelligible public discourse. The author also provides an ideological critique of the "postmodern response" to this state of cultural affairs, and charts some paths of resistance for writers and readers in postmodern capitalism animated by the vision of a new public sphere of communicative democracy. The volume includes an intriguing discussion of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. ISBN 1-85000-755-1: $42.00. |
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