Exit capitalism : literary culture, theory, and post-secular modernity / Simon During.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction --- Part 1: Modernizing the English Literary Field .1. Church, State and Modernization: Literature as Gentlemanly Knowledge after 1688 -- 2. Quackery, Selfhood and the Emergence of the Modern Cultural Marketplace -- 3. Interesting: the Politics of the Sympathetic Imagination --- Part 2: Towards Endgame Capitalism: Literature, Theory, Culture. 4. World Literature, Stalinism and the Nation: Christina Stead as Lost Object -- 5. Socialist Ends: the Emergence of Academic Theory in Postwar Britain -- 6. Completing Secularism: the Mundane in the Neo-Liberal Era -- 7. Refusing Capitalism? Theory and Cultural Studies after 1968.

Exit Capitalism explores a new path for cultural studies and re-examines key moments of British cultural and literary history. Simon During argues that the long and liberating journey towards democratic state capitalism has led to an unhappy dead-end from which there is no imaginable exit. In this context, what do the humanities look like? What is alive and what is dead in the culture and its heritage? It becomes clear that the contemporary world order remains imperfect not just because it is unjust but because it cannot meet ethical standards produced in a past that still knew genuine hope. Simon During emphasizes the need to rethink the position of Christianity and religion in the past, and at a more concrete level, also analyses how the decline of the socialist ideal and the emergence of endgame capitalism helped to produce both modern theory and cultural studies as academic fields.