This is Not New: Art, Culture, and the Promise of Change

What does it mean to call something ‘new’? Why is Western culture, even after postmodernism, still so obsessed with the concept? What are the political consequences of relying on this culture to bring about social change?

In this provocative book, David Balzer argues that Western culture was never designed to produce truly new or original artefacts. Rather, the West moves from fixation to fixation, trend to trend—a cycle of creation and destruction with deep origins in Judeo-Christianity and the paganism that preceded it. The culture industry is rooted in a resource-scarce economy, which promises its own form of change while preserving many other things exactly as they are.

From the New Jerusalem to the New Left, Vannevar Bush to Kate Bush, This Is Not New takes a dynamic approach, asking difficult questions about the role of culture not in making change, but in delaying—even preventing—it. Balzer urges us to look at the Western culture industry for what it is, lest it become all there is.