6. The State of the World Today

With climate change, inequality, and Covid-19 raging just outside our windows, it can sometimes feel like we live in a world without a future. How did we get here? And how do we get back out? How do we reinstate the future if we no longer believe in progress? Recorded on lockdown during the coronavirus outbreak in New York, this is part 1 of a three-part episode exploring our society's tacit belief in the "the end of history," and what we can do to shed this politically-charged and dangerous illusion. WORKS CITED -Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. 1st edition. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 1984. -Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 2020. -Žižek, Slavoj. “Beyond Mandela Without Becoming Mugabe: Some Postapocalyptic Considerations.” Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, Germany, November 19, 2015. From YouTube user Ippolit Belinski, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5DiZBb8f6A -Danto, Arthur C. After the End of Art. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998. -Fukuyama, Francis. “The End of History?” The National Interest, no. 16 (1989): 3–18. -Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992. -Bradbury, Ray. Dandelion Wine. Bantam Books, 1976. -Moore, Michael. “Michael Moore’s Easter Mass.” Rumble with Michael Moore. Accessed April 11, 2020. https://anchor.fm/rumble-with-michael-moore MUSIC -Theme music and consultation: Georgina Rossi, www.georginarossi.com -Interlude: Franz Schubert, Erlkönig, based on the poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe