Social Ideas in an Age of Fracture

My contribution will stem from a book, just now
completed, tracing transformations in social ideas in the United States
in the last quarter of the 20th century. It both reflects on the 1980s
as a critical moment in the history of ideas and resituates it in longer
trajectories and dynamics, on the intellectual left as well as the
intellectual right. At its core is the fracturing not of society
itself--though that did indeed happen--but the fracturing of the very
ideas and vocabulary capable of holding the larger, collective, social
dimensions of human life into smaller, more individualistic pieces. The
canvas includes not only the language of politics and power, but also
the languages of race, gender, society, and time.