Book Review: Isabelle Barbéris' L'Art du politiquement correct: Sur le nouvel académisme anticulturel
“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.” -Franz Kafka You could fill a small library with books on every side of the “culture war” over the past fifty years, most of which are pretty depressing. I have never been sold on the term, but it generally has something to do with “values,” how these are expressed in works of art, and how these things are legislated and bureaucratically managed. That “culture” may be one of the most perniciously idiotic pseudo-concepts in intellectual history does not help any of this. To her credit, Isabelle Barbéris ' 2018 book L’Art du politiquement correct: Sur le nouvel académisme anticulturel does at least introduce some potentially productive directions in thinking through this. It is a book of two parts. The first sixty percent is a rather broad overview of the theme. The last chunk of it shifts around through a few more specific aesthetic issues. While the first aspect is pretty clear, the second is mo...