Wyndham Lewis, Portrait of T. S. Eliot, 1938
5,352 words
Part 1 of 2
The First World War brought to a climax a cultural crisis in Western Civilization that had been developing for centuries: money overwhelmed tradition, as Spengler would have put it[1] (or, to resort to the language of Marx, the bourgeoisie supplanted the aristocracy).[2] Industrialization accentuated the process of commercialization, with its concomitant urbanization and the disruption of organic bonds and social cohesion. This has thrown societies into a state of perpetual flux, with culture reflecting that condition.
It was—and is—a problem of the primacy of Capital. Read more …
7,981 words
Morse Peckham on Corporations & Cultural Incoherence
Morse Peckham
826 words
Morse Peckham (1914-1993) was a literary critic and cultural historian who was very well-known during his lifetime but who has been largely forgotten today. He had all the qualities that make him anathema in today’s academia: Besides being white, brilliant, and a writer of enormous clarity and precision, Peckham was also a careful and insightful editor of nineteenth-century literary texts, a Darwinist, and a prescient observer of the decline of the American university.
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