So how does Jacoby navigate this scepticism towards the relentless celebration of diversity – a sensitive and much cherished credo to attack in the 21st century? He is not against diversity per se but critical of diversity as an ideology – the new opiate of the masses. Elements of The Last Intellectuals and its indictment of the academic industry also feature in Jacoby’s latest book. Think of it as a modern reboot of Julien Benda’s 1928 book The Treason of the Intellectuals. The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (1987) was influential in stoking the debate about the demise of the public intellectual – and it also directed critical ire against the modern university. But in his latest book, Russell Jacoby seems to be saying: “Newton and your Law of Universal Gravitation – be damned.”Īnybody who is familiar with his earlier books and journalistic writings – he is a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles – will know that Jacoby has iconoclastic form. So diversity is a reality and a positive force. According to Ben Judah’s This is London (2016), during the last 40 years the percentage of white Britons living in London has fallen from 86 per cent to 45 per cent the number of Africans living in the capital would fill a city the size of Sheffield. This metropolitan superpower was built on banking and a growing population of kaleidoscopic diversity. Take London, for example, a city that contributes a quarter of the UK’s economic output. Diversity is universally endorsed from CEOs to police chiefs and seen as the barometer of a progressive, tolerant and even prosperous society. Social Amnesia contains a forceful argument for "thinking against the grain - an endeavor that remains as urgent as ever." It is an important work for sociologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts.These days, criticising diversity, never mind positing its decline, is like disputing the laws of gravity. He discusses how in the years since Social Amnesia was first published society has oscillated from extreme subjectivism to extreme objectivism, which feed off each other and constitute two forms of social amnesia: a forgetting of the past and a pseudo-historical consciousness. Jacoby's new self-evaluation has the same sharp edge as the book itself, offering special insights into the evolution of psychological theory during the past two decades.In his probing, self-critical new introduction, Jacoby maintains that any serious appraisal of psychology or sociology, or any discipline, must seek to separate the political from the theoretical. It is simultaneously a critique of present practices and theories in psychology. Social Amnesia is an effort to remember what is perpetually lost under the pressure of society. In this book, Jacoby excavates the critical and historical concepts that have fallen prey to the dynamic of a society that strips them both of their historical and critical content. Russell Jacoby defines social amnesia as society's repression of remembrance - society's own past. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.īook Description Paperback. Social Amnesia contains a forceful argument for "thinking against the grain-an endeavor that remains as urgent as ever." It is an important work for sociologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts. In his probing, self-critical new introduction, Jacoby maintains that any serious appraisal of psychology or sociology, or any discipline, must seek to separate the political from the theoretical. Jacoby's new self-evaluation has the same sharp edge as the book itself, offering special insights into the evolution of psychological theory during the past two decades. Russell Jacoby defines social amnesia as society's repression of remembrance-society's own past.
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