What's Going On- - The Struggle for Contemporary American Identity

What's Going On?: The Struggle for Contemporary American Identity



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English | 2025 | ISBN: 9781003662587 | 261 pages | True PDF,EPUB | 11.62 MB

Exploring the backstory of contemporary political polarization, What’s Going On? recognizes that simple stories of blame and uncontested stories of polarization prove themselves to be bad stories that produce bad politics.

This book argues that stories have increasingly become matters of affect rather than meaning—instead of asking what stories mean, we are likely to ask how they make people feel. These stories are cultural tendencies that define the possibilities and limits of political action and behavior, and the book tells its own story about how the stories of America’s crises have defined our political culture as they struggle over questions of ideology, identity, and social belonging. It lays out a theoretical position that recognizes the need for complicated stories and rigorous thought, pointing a way forward, out of the chaos, seeking to repair the world and offer better stories and more humane political possibilities.