Black Mass or Tourists of History

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Author: John N Gray

For the decade that followed the end of the cold war, the world was lulled into a sense that a consumerist, globalized, peaceful future beckoned. The beginning of the twenty-first century has rudely disposed of such ideas—most obviously through 9/11and its aftermath. But just as damaging has been the rise in the West of a belief that a single model of political behavior will become a worldwide norm and that, if necessary, it will be enforced at gunpoint. In Black Mass, celebrated philosopher and critic John Gray explains how utopian ideals have taken on a dangerous significance in the hands of right-wing conservatives and religious zealots. He charts the history of utopianism, from the Reformation through the French Revolution and into the present. And most  urgently, he describes how utopian politics have moved from the extremes of the political spectrum into mainstream politics, dominating the administrations of both George W. Bush and Tony Blair, and indeed coming to define the political center. Far from having shaken off discredited ideology, Gray suggests, we are more than ever in its clutches. Black Mass is a truly frightening and challenging work by one of Britain’s leading political thinkers.

Publishers Weekly

Some readers will see pessimism where others see sober appraisal in Gray's antiutopian argument that we must reconcile ourselves to a world of multiple truths and incompatible freedoms, where there is no overarching meaning and human values and desires can never be fully harmonized. The views that history progresses toward perfection and the millenarian faith in human salvation-both rooted in abiding Christian myths-are as tenacious as they have proven destructive, the renowned British political theorist and critic argues. Building succinctly on arguments developed in his previous work (including Two Faces of Liberalismand Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern), Gray traces the course of apocalyptic-utopian politics from early Christianity through its secular variant in the Enlightenment and into modern political thought from Marx to Francis Fukuyama, the French Revolution to radical Islamism. Centrally, he assails the contemporary American right (and staunch neoconservative fellow traveler Tony Blair), which after 9/11 advanced into the mainstream the utopianism previously confined to the extreme right and left. His eloquent and illuminating attack also challenges a notion common to the liberal establishment: that history moves inexorably toward the universal application of U.S.-style liberal democracy. He calls it a delusional article of faith that, like the utopian variants before it, easily justifies violence in the name of a greater destiny. (Oct.)

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Kirkus Reviews

Seeing history as a progressive narrative, especially one with a utopian ending, is a practice that has doomed earlier civilizations and threatens our own, argues Gray (European Thought/London School of Economics). Having dealt with the concept of human progress in such previous books as Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern (2003), the author sees no reason to revise his core belief: "Human knowledge tends to increase, but humans do not become any more civilized as a result." He urges Western powers to adopt a political philosophy of realism. Look, he says, not at the Middle East you want to see-a cluster of none-too-peaceable kingdoms transformed by force into little democracies whose oil wells gurgle merrily to supply the West-but as it really is, a volatile place whose populations have always hated one another and probably always will. Gray spends lots of time painting the historical and philosophical background. He examines the apocalyptical aspects of Christianity and other religions, all of which in his view share a number of traits, most significantly the notion that the end is near. He takes a look at utopian communities of earlier times and notes that inhumane means have almost always been used to attempt to achieve humane ends. In a troubling chapter about the 20th century, Gray characterizes both Communists and Nazis as "children of the Enlightenment," employing the "scientific" principles of economics and eugenics to justify their political goals. The English author has some harsh words for both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair (equally deluded, in his view), but he bashes Bush continually for reliance on "faith-based intelligence"-with Iraq serving as a compelling argumentfor the pitfalls of this approach. Throughout his impassioned text, Gray's prose is thick with allusion and quotation, but even thicker with erudition and provocation. Makes a discomfiting case that Western liberal democracy just is not suitable for much of the world. Agent: Tracy Bohan/Wylie Agency

Book about: The Last Days of Europe or The Young Hitler I Knew

Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero

Author: Marita Sturken

In Tourists of History, the cultural critic Marita Sturken argues that over the past two decades, Americans have responded to national trauma through consumerism, kitsch sentiment, and tourist practices in ways that reveal a tenacious investment in the idea of America's innocence. Sturken investigates the consumerism that followed from the September 11th attacks; the contentious, ongoing debates about memorials and celebrity-architect designed buildings at Ground Zero; and two outcomes of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City: the Oklahoma City National Memorial and the execution of Timothy McVeigh.

Sturken contends that a consumer culture of comfort objects such as World Trade Center snow globes, FDNY teddy bears, and Oklahoma City Memorial T-shirts and branded water, as well as reenactments of traumatic events in memorial and architectural designs, enables a national tendency to see U.S. culture as distant from both history and world politics. A kitsch comfort culture contributes to a "tourist" relationship to history: Americans can feel good about visiting and buying souvenirs at sites of national mourning without having to engage with the economic, social, and political causes of the violent events. While arguing for the importance of remembering tragic losses of life, Sturken is urging attention to a dangerous confluence-of memory, tourism, consumerism, paranoia, security, and kitsch-that promulgates fear to sell safety, offers prepackaged emotion at the expense of critical thought, contains alternative politics, and facilitates public acquiescence in the federal government's repressive measures at home and its aggressive political and militarypolicies abroad.

About the Author:
Marita Sturken is a professor of culture and communication at New York University

Theresa Kintz - Library Journal

This engaging book probes the impact of two traumatic historical events, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City bombing, from a novel perspective. Sturken seeks to illuminate the transformation of the secular into the sacred, and the intersection of two cultures: that of mourning and that of consumerism. Like an archaeologist, Sturken (culture & communications, NYU) digs deep to uncover the symbolism contained in our material response to politically motivated violence. She offers a sophisticated and insightful analysis of what the treatment of the actual sites, now ruins, and the cultural production of souvenirs say about the psyche of the American consumer-citizen. The book is full of images exemplifying how the construction of post-tragedy national identity draws upon our notions of collective innocence, incorporating material culture in the quest for certainty and comfort in an uncertain and uncomfortable world. For example, our fear is soothed by the public presence of the Teddy Bear and the Stars and Stripes. With the terrorist as iconoclast, the memorial and the souvenir come to the emotional rescue. Readers will be fascinated by the social and political commentary buried in Sturken's appraisal of kitsch. A thought-provoking work; highly recommended.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     1
Consuming Fear and Selling Comfort     35
Citizens and Survivors: Cultural Memory and Oklahoma City     93
The Spectacle of Death and the Spectacle of Grief: The Execution of Timothy McVeigh     139
Tourism and "Sacred Ground": The Space of Ground Zero     165
Architectures of Grief and the Aesthetics of Absence     219
Conclusion     287
Notes     295
Bibliography     319
Index     333