Stephen Duncombe on imagination, spectacle and desire.

One of the best books I read this summer was Stephen Duncombe’s ‘Dream: re-imagining progressive politics in an age of fantasy’.  Written during the last days of the presidency of George W. Bush, it was a plea for progressive politics to embrace imagination, spectacle, wit, sensuality and what one reviewer called “a joyful aesthetic of dissent”. I loved the book’s assertion that “unless progressives acknowledge and accept a politics of imagination, desire and spectacle, and, most important, make it ethical and make it our own, we will bring about our “ruin rather than preservation”.