Читать книгу Livin' la Vida Barroca. American Culture in an Age of Imperial Orthodoxies онлайн

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In today’s USA we have storytellers in abundance. However, they are now mostly found in offices in Hollywood, Washington and New York. Indeed, it is thanks to the very effective messaging generated by these powerful cultureplanners in regard to the supposedly unique levels of “freedom” “individuality” and “choice” in our polity, that most Americans, even educated ones for whom skeptical curiosity is supposed to be a way of life, cannot even begin ask, never mind answer, important questions regarding the role of propaganda in our society.

One of the main goals of this book, then, is to try and stimulate others to recognize and dissect the function of elite-generated culture-planning in our civic spaces. It is, I believe, only when less economically privileged Americans gain a clear understanding of what Bourdieu liked to call the “structuring structures” of public discourse, that they will be able to create countervailing institutions capable of generating a more democratic and dignity-driven culture in their midst.