The cultural turn

Sep 27, 2016 by

by Tim Black, Spiked:

The logic of the Culture Wars has been exhausted. The metaphor has run its course.’ (1) So concluded historian Andrew Hartman in his magisterial study, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. When the book was published, in Spring 2015, it was not an unusual opinion. Others, too, argued that this decades-old conflict between imperiled social conservatives and emboldened progressives, between those who feared the dissolution of traditional family life, the degradation of Christian values and the undermining of the work ethic, and those who support abortion, sexual liberation and the ever-increasing panoply of so-called progressive causes, had well and truly run its course. The arguments had lost their force, the combatants their energy, the issues their pique. Who now, outside the batty fringes of evangelical Christianity and those clinging desperately to their guns, disagreed with the progressive consensus?, asked the victors. The Supreme Court decision in 2015 to legalise same-sex marriage across the US was merely the long-awaited coda to the Culture Wars, proof, if any were needed, that the progressives had vanquished their worn-out opponents.

But, today, that seems like a premature conclusion. And that’s not just because Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has gained popular traction among white working-class America, galvanising a socially conservative opposition to almost everything the Culture Wars’ supposed victors deem as progressive causes today. Nor is it a premature conclusion simply because it’s clear that culture wars are now being fought with equal zeal throughout Western society, from the working-class revolt of Brexit, rich as it was in profound cultural antagonism, to the simmering anti-establishment discontent now turning Europe into tribes of the ‘left behind’ vs their affluent, ostentatiously cosmopolitan, Brussels-leaning superiors.

No, culture wars are proliferating, entrenching, deepening, because, over the past half century, the cultural domain has been thoroughly politicised. And with culture now established as the main site of political conflict, what was once largely private is now unquestionably public. In other words, the different ways in which people live their lives, indeed express themselves – their consumption habits, their leisure pursuits, their intimate relationships, their idiolects – have become matters of public contestation, issues to be fought over and legislated on. The historical shift is marked. Political battles are no longer fought over people’s ability to buy food – they’re fought over what and how people eat; they’re no longer fought over equal rights – they’re fought over people’s ‘unwitting’ attitudes to difference; they’re no longer fought over the organisation of the economy – they’re fought over people’s economic behaviour, be it the greed of bankers or the avarice of businessmen. Political economy has been eclipsed by cultural politics.

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See also: The death of God and the war on terror: Terry Eagleton on why God won’t go away, by Joseph Hartropp, Christian Today

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