Overview

In Capitalism and Culture, Henry Giroux argues that culture has now become the central front in a global struggle for democracy. Drawing on thinkers from Bourdieu and Gramsci to Stuart Hall and Edward Said, Giroux exposes how capitalism and authoritarianism now fuse into a single 'disimagination machine' — one that erases memory, normalises cruelty and trains citizens to accept injustice as common sense. Across essays and interviews, he shows that fascism is not only a political or economic project but a cultural one, sustained through spectacle, distraction and the control of language, media, and technology. Yet culture also holds the means of resistance: it can awaken conscience, preserve memory and cultivate the imagination necessary for solidarity and change. Giroux calls for a renewed cultural and pedagogical revolution — one that reclaims education, art, and media as spaces for civic courage and hope. Against the culture of cruelty, he urges the creation of a culture of freedom. Capitalism and Culture is an essential manifesto for artists, educators, curators and citizens who see culture not as entertainment but as the ground on which democracy itself will stand or fall.

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9781912528639

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Reviews

A critical tour-de-force, bringing Henry Giroux's visionary intellect to bear on the stormy political atmosphere we now inhabit. The book dissects today's climate of rising authoritarianism and exposes how gangster capitalism weaponises culture. A much-needed resource for making sense of these troubled times. David Trend, Professor, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine Henry Giroux's work is a rallying cry. Sharp, accessible, urgent - and essential reading. Anthony Luvera, Associate Professor Photography, Coventry University Henry Giroux does not write books - he forges weapons out of words. For decades, his thought has been a lantern carried through the ruins, guiding generations of students and scholars toward the possibility of freedom. This latest book - a selection of some of his most important and urgent essays - is no lantern. It is a trumpet blast at the gates, a thunderclap tearing open the sky. It warns that we stand at the edge of a graveyard civilization, where the culture of cruelty has grown so vast that it corrodes not only our institutions but our very souls. Fascism, in Giroux's telling, is not merely the enemy at the door; it is the poison that seeps into our capacity to reason, to dream, to love. And yet, in the cadence of his sentences, resistance flickers alive. Giroux insists that thought itself can still be insurgent, that love can still be revolutionary, that pedagogy - when sharpened - becomes nothing less than an act of insurrection against the machinery of forgetting. To read him now is to hear the summons of history: to choose between surrender to barbarism or the hard, luminous work of reclaiming our shared humanity. Peter McLaren, Emeritus Professor, School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles Henry Giroux is a master explorer and this book richly exemplifies his findings. Richard D Wolff, Visiting Professor of Economics, New School University, New York An important anthology of writings for these perilous times by one of the leading social critics around. Henry Giroux constitutes a crag of sanity in an ocean of brutal fascist madness. Peter Mayo, UNESCO Chair in Global Adult Education, University of Malta

Author Information

Henry A Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury, 2022); Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-revolutionary Politics (Bloomsbury, 2023), co-authored with Anthony DiMaggio; Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2024); Burden of Conscience: Educating Beyond the Veil of Silence (Bloomsbury, 2025); and his forthcoming Assassins of Memory: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Erasure (Bloomsbury). His website is www.henryagiroux.com

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