Deserting from the Culture Wars (The MIT Press)

Artists and writers consider a tactical desertion from the "culture wars"—a refusal to be distracted, an embrace of the emancipatory understanding of culture.

Deserting from the Culture Wars reflects upon and intervenes in our current moment of ever-more polarizing ideological combat, often seen as the return of the "culture wars." How are these culture wars defined and waged? Engaging in a theater of war that has been delineated by the enemy is a shortcut to defeat. Getting out of the reactive mode that produces little but a series of Pavlovian responses, this book proposes a tactical desertion from the culture wars as they are being waged today—a refusal to play the other side's war games, an unwillingness to be distracted.