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Carly Elizabeth Schall

University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Sociology 8120 William H. Sewell Social Science Building 1180 Observatory Drive Madison, WI 53706 ceschall[at]wisc[dot]edu

“Yet the modernists’ once-subversive refusal to be gulled or lulled has long since degenerated into a ritual despair at least as corrupt, soft-minded, and cowardly — not to say smug — as the false cheer it replaced. The terms of the dialectic have reversed: now the subversive task is to affirm an authentic post-modernist optimism that gives full weight to existent horror and possible (or probable) apocalyptic disaster, yet insists — credibly — that we can, well, overcome. The catch is that you have to be an optimist (an American?) in the first place not to dismiss such a project as insane.”

Ellin Willis, Beginning to see the Light: Pieces of a Decade