The Future of Decline
eBook - ePub

The Future of Decline

Anglo-American Culture at Its Limits

  1. 164 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Future of Decline

Anglo-American Culture at Its Limits

About this book

As the US becomes a second-place nation, can it shed the superpower nostalgia that still haunts the UK?

The debate over the US's fading hegemony has raged and sputtered for 50 years, glutting the market with prophecies about American decline. Media experts ask how fast we will fall and how much we will lose, but generally ignore the fundamental question: What does decline mean? What is the significance, in experiential and everyday terms, in feelings and fantasies, of living in a country past its prime?

Drawing on the example of post-WWII Britain and looking ahead at 2020s America, Jed Esty suggests that becoming a second-place nation is neither disastrous, as alarmists claim, nor avoidable, as optimists insist. Contemporary declinism often masks white nostalgia and perpetuates a conservative longing for Cold War certainty. But the narcissistic lure of "lost greatness" appeals across the political spectrum. As Esty argues, it resonates so widely in mainstream media because Americans have lost access to a language of national purpose beyond global supremacy. It is time to shelve the shopworn fables of endless US dominance, to face the multipolar world of the future, and to tell new American stories. The Future of Decline is a guide to finding them.

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Yes, you can access The Future of Decline by Jed Esty in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Social History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Year
2022
Print ISBN
9781503633339
eBook ISBN
9781503633674
Edition
1

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Preface: Lost Greatness as a Way of Life
  6. 1. Against Declinism
  7. 2. After Supremacy: Ten Theses
  8. 3. British Pasts, American Futures
  9. 4. American Culture in the Age of Limits
  10. Acknowledgments
  11. Bibliography
  12. Notes