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Back in 2015, with reading suggestions from readers.
ADDENDUM: Reader Don Sudduth suggested opening comments for relevant literature on this topic since 2015.
The original post had some fascinating comments on recommended literature/resources for the undergraduate's questions regarding capitalism and culture. However, I couldn't help but consider how much has changed in the last 7 years and how capitalism has altered our cultural perceptions during Trump and then the ongoing pandemic.
I'm interested in what has been written post 2015 that may provide some updated views.
Ivan Ascher's 2016 "Portfolio Society: On the Capitalist Mode of Prediction" (2016) might fit the bill here, though it was written pre-Trump. It's a nice read.
I was surprised not to see Mark Fisher's work come up in the 2015 discussion, as his influential "Capitalist Realism" dates to 2009; there's a newer anthology of his writings that includes post-2015 material, up to his death in 2017 (titled "K-Punk"; I've read only the earlier essay though). Fisher was based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths (UK). He wrote mainly for public audiences rather than specialized scholarly ones; of the writers mentioned in the previous thread, Byung-Chul Han is probably the most similar in style and tone. (Note also that the book by Han recommended there has since then been translated into English and published by Verso as "Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power")
But…. if we're interested in understanding the cultural development of capitalism since 2015, it's not obvious to me that we should privilege things written in those same years, the hot takes published at little remove. My own impulse is to go backwards; it seems to me that recent events have made the early Frankfurt School, for example, more relevant, not less. If I were assembling a syllabus on capitalism and culture right now, I would probably build it around "Dialectic of Enlightenment" and "One-Dimensional Man," and I would read both of those in terms of Marx first and foremost. Then I would read a lot of Stuart Hall.
I see in the earlier thread someone recommended Byung-Chul Han in German.
Most of his books have been translated into English by now. I've read Psychopolitics and The Burnout Society.
He can be very insightful, although he's finally apolitical. That is, while his critique of contemporary capitalism stems from Marx among others, his offered solution is, in the books I've read, dropping out of the rat race. However, he is easy and pleasant to read and finds nothing redeeming in contemporary capitalist society.
Haven't read it, but Terry Eagleton, Culture (2016), seems to fit the bill.
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/965909701
So, I went through all of the suggested readings from the past post comments as well as this one and created a list for myself. But, I thought this might be a useful list for others as well.
Ascher, I. (2016). Portfolio society: On the capitalist mode of prediction.
Bauman, Z. (2013). Liquid fear.
Chiapello, E. & Boltanski L. (2005/2018). The new spirit of capitalism.
Derber, C. (2015). Sociopathic society: A people's sociology of the United States.
Eagleton, T. (2000/2018). Culture.
Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative?
Fromm, E., & Anderson, L. A. (2017). The sane society.
Han, B. C. (2017). Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and new technologies of power.
Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism.
Honneth, A. (2014). Freedom's right.
Horwitz, S. (2015). Hayek's Modern Family: classical liberalism and the evolution of social institutions.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism.
Karatani, K. (2014). The structure of world history.
Lasch, C. (1980/2018). The culture of narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations.
Levine, D. P. (2013). Pathology of the capitalist spirit.
Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2011). Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming.
Phillips-Fein, K. (2010). Invisible hands: The businessmen's crusade against the new deal.
Robinson, W. I. (2014). Global capitalism and the crisis of humanity.
Saul, J. R. (1995). The unconscious civilization.
Saul, J. R. (2013). Voltaire's bastards: The dictatorship of reason in the West.
Schweickart, D. (2011). After capitalism.
Sennett, R. (2007). The culture of the new capitalism.
Verhaeghe, P. (2014). What about me? The struggle for identity in a market-based society.
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