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Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia

Francis O´gorman

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Description for Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia Hardback. Num Pages: 192 pages. BIC Classification: DSB; HBA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade); (U) Tertiary Education (US: College). Dimension: 216 x 140. .
Forgetfulness is a book about modern culture and its profound rejection of the past. It traces the emergence in recent history of the idea that what is important in human life and work is what will happen in the future. Francis O'Gorman shows how forgetting has been embraced as a requirement for modern existence and how our education, as well as life with fast-moving technology, further disconnects us from our pasts. But he also examines the cultural narratives that urge us to resist our collective amnesia. O'Gorman argues that such narratives, in rich but ... Read more

Product Details

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Format

Hardback

Publication date

2017

Condition

New

Number of Pages

200

Place of Publication

New York, United States

ISBN

9781501324697

SKU

V9781501324697

Shipping Time

Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days

Ref

99-10

About Francis O´gorman

Francis O'Gorman, from English, Irish, and Hungarian families, was born in 1967 and educated as C.S. Deneke Organ Scholar of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where he took a double first and a doctorate in English literature. He is the author or editor of 23 books, mostly on English literature, and of essays on literature, music, and the condition of the ... Read more

Reviews for Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia

Crisp and elegant ... Cultural memory, [O'Gorman] argues, shapes our sense of time and connectedness to one another on a local and global level. By winding down the portcullis on the past, we risk closing our minds.
The Observer
A book as acutely intelligent and as original as this is a rare gift of fortune. Read ... Read moreit and you will not easily forget what you have learned.
John Gray, New Statesman
[A]n engaging dissection of an important phenomenon.
Morning Star
[This] provocative and engaging little book should be read as a personal essay ... [O'Gorman] manages to be both erudite and accessible, which is something of a feat.
Literary Review
After a glut of books about mindfulness it came as something of a relief to encounter Forgetfulness ... the book is supremely intelligent, but with the knowledge worn lightly and it's eminently readable, regardless of how you feel about the conclusions he draws ... a book to be savoured and considered.
The Bookbag
What is wrong with the modern world? Why does life seem so pointless, anxious and annoying? For Francis O'Gorman, the answer is pleasingly simple: we have lost touch with the stability of traditions from the past, and now live in a state of constant, confusing flux ... O'Gorman is at his best when he writes about literature, which is not always the case with literary critics ... At his best Prof O'Gorman sounds, perhaps not surprisingly, like an inspired young John Ruskin reminding his readers that they needed to pay more attention to their heritage before it vanished forever and they are left in an ugly, utilitarian world fit to serve material rather than spiritual needs.
The Irish Times
An ambitious, often engaging argument.
Prospect
Carrying his learning lightly, Francis O'Gorman elegantly enquires into the reasons why the 21st century is losing touch with the past. History, he argues, has become a mere commodity, emptied of meaning by commercial choices, ideological sleight of hand, cultural theories and educational decisions. In these post-truth days he challenges us to reconnect with the past, actively and analytically, in order to restore the links between sense and meaning, language and reality, and to reestablish the authority of the past. No nostalgist, O'Gorman speaks for history. This is not a hymn to the past, but a call critically to recall it. At a time of migration and globalization, he rediscovers the home of memory. Forgetfulness is for anyone who wants to remember what it is like to read an intelligent and provocative book.
Robert Hewison, cultural historian and author of Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain (2014)
Forgetfulness brilliantly diagnoses the cultural Alzheimer's disease from which modern man so complacently suffers, to the great detriment of his character. O'Gorman makes a strong plea for the importance of cultural memory and, above all, for a healthier and less narrowly self-referential historiography.
Theodore Dalrymple, writer, doctor, and author of Our Culture, What's Left of It (2004)
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Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia

Francis O´gorman

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