The Progress Trap
€33.90
Product Information
| ISBN | 9781509567621 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ben Cobley |
| Publisher | John Wiley and Sons Ltd |
| Format | Hardcover |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Weight (kg) | 0.494 |
| Publishing Date | 30/05/2025 |
| Price (excl. tax) | €31.98 |
| Tax | €1.92 |
| Price (incl. tax) | €33.90 |
| Availability | 20 units in external warehouse |
Product Description
The idea of progress, one of the animating ideas of Western civilization, has now gone global. From Marxism and neoliberalism to today’s mutant identity politics, it offers a framework of knowledge and confidence: an assurance that things will get better and that history is on our side. However, in doing this it creates a form of authority that is simultaneously imaginary and dishonest, resting on confidence in a future that is really contingent and unknowable. In The Progress Trap, Ben Cobley looks at this progressive mindset as a form of power, conferring a right to act and control others. ‘Change’, ‘transformation’ and the ‘new’ are the superior values, meaning destruction of the old: people, cultures and nature. It is a trap into which nearly all of us fall at times, so attractive are its stories and familiar its techniques. Hard-hitting but thoughtful, the book is a meditation on the sinister consequences of the progressive way of being: for ourselves, for our democracy, for our art and for the pursuit of real knowledge.