To Relish the Sublime?: Culture and Self-realization in Postmodern Times [Paperback]

"In a time when culture is said to be 'everything', Ryle and Soper are prepared to say what culture is opposed to, and thus to salvage its scarcity and its value. Defending what culture can do for the stubbornly persistent self, their untimely meditation on politics and aesthetics announces the twilight of the Nietzscheans and the dawn, perhaps, of a new cohabitation of cultural politics with literary pleasure. Brave, subtle, and passionately intelligent, this book is a much-needed plea for belief in the culture to which we also demand a more democratic access." - Bruce Robbins "The idea of culture as a means of self-realisation and an embodiment of universal values has been derided by most progressive critics for more than a generation, and by many reactionary ones too. But perhaps they have all been wrong. This well-informed study of history, politics and literature makes an eloquent case for reinstating it: a powerful and timely book." - Jonathan Ree

More than 130 years from Matthew Arnold's pronouncement that human beings ""must be compelled to relish the sublime,"" education in the humanities still relies on a more or less Arnoldian ideal of 'culture' as the means of intellectual development. In this distinctive and original work, Martin Ryle and Kate Soper reflect critically on this enduring ideal, exploring the growing tensions and contradictions between this and the contemporary world of work, pleasure, and consumption.

Martin Ryle is Senior Lecturer in Continuing Education at the University of Sussex. His previous books include Ecology and Socialism, and Journeys in Ireland: Literary Travellers, Rural Landscapes, Cultural Relations. Kate Soper teaches philosophy and cultural theory at the University of North London. Her previous works include On Human Needs, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human and, with Verso, Troubled Pleasures.