Overview

Since the beginning of the 21st century, global warming, terrorism, the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine have created a widespread feeling that the world is an increasingly dangerous place.  In response to this situation, it is understandable that many people are inclined to retreat to the safety of their home – the last refuge and safeguard against the savagery of the outside world.  But the home is not just a shelter: it is a space that supplants and replaces the world, a wired cocoon that gradually renders any journey to the outside world superfluous. From our couch, we can enjoy remotely the pleasures once offered by the cinema, the theatre and the café. Everything, from food to love to art, can be delivered to your door. Armed with a smartphone and a Netflix account, why would anyone risk life and limb to venture out to the cinema?  Compulsory confinement, the nightmare of the pandemic years, seems to have been replaced by voluntary self-confinement. Fleeing from the cities, working remotely, relinquishing travel and tourism, we risk becoming reclusive creatures that cower at the slightest tremor. In this witty and spirited book, Pascal Bruckner takes aim at today’s voluntary seclusionism and the self-inflicted atrophy that comes with it, tracing its philosophical contours and historical roots. It is no longer the tyranny of lockdowns that threatens us but rather the tyranny of the sofa: will the slipper and the dressing gown be the new symbols of tomorrow's world?

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9781509559527

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Reviews

“The world goes to hell in a handcart. We take refuge indoors: utopia is privatized. Pascal Bruckner watches, in his slippers, issuing these missals. If he is right, we are in trouble. How do we recover the public from civic involution, and the crippling sense of fear? These are some of the questions opened in this book. Be provoked! Be irritated! Be stimulated! Step outside!” Peter Beilharz, Sichuan University “We're in an age of sterility, Pascal Bruckner says, when fear and lassitude send the young to their rooms and attach them to screens. The lockdowns merely hastened a process of withdrawal that has proceeded for a long time. Bruckner details this condition with a surgical eye, explaining the deeper currents of present malaise. Every page has wisdom worth memorizing – 'All of today’s technologies encourage incarceration under the guise of openness,' 'Totalitarian powers have always wanted to govern the dreams of their citizens' ... It is a dark vision, but the first step toward the light is a clearsighted understanding of where one sits.” Mark Bauerlein, Emory University “Born of the pandemic, Pascal Bruckner’s The Triumph of the Slippers is a wonderfully thoughtful and subtle meditation on the psychological, social, and cultural impact of the Covid pandemic, and a provocative diagnosis of a ‘spiritual long Covid’ with which many – if not most – of us still live today. Eloquently written like all of Bruckner’s work, The Triumph of the Slippers is the work of a French moraliste at the top of his form, combining the erudition and irony of the perceptive philosopher with the sensitivity and craft of the  gifted novelist. Highly recommended.” Richard Golsan, Texas A&M University

Author Information

Pascal Bruckner is the bestselling author of many books including The Tyranny of Guilt, Perpetual Euphoria and The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse.

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