This book I have a problem insofar as the author seeks to settle his personal accounts with a period he hates (the book is a long justification of hatred doomed by the author to the 1980s) in an objective manner. One can only agree with him when he denounces the hegemony of advertising (which even ends up influencing the political expression), poor new philosophers (which would, in Cusset, tried to pass dogmatism, anti -racisme, political correctness, anti-totalitarianism of philosophy) or the French cinema of the time (chic and OCD Besson Beineix). This chic and knock his years is also reflected in popular science to excesses (see Bogdanov brothers emissions). However, if one must recognize great qualities to this book (one can not discuss its seriousness and documentation), he also has the annoying through. For example, the author sometimes make factual mistakes. For example, it refers to an issue but Patrick Sébastien talks about Sabatier. Then he denounces the rediscovery of Tocqueville and the ideological hegemony of liberalism (right and left) during this decade. This systematic denunciation of liberalism does not turn to the Stalinist purge? Was not it time, in a country where the Stalinists have long held the upper hand (see the rationale and abject denials of Sartre on the gulag in the 1940s) that a philosophy of freedom (Aron) was rediscovered?
He denounces the intrusion of the state on the body of citizens (tobacco prevention campaigns, prevention against AIDS) in the tradition of Foucault. If the French government had not reacted, Cusset only would he not accused of irresponsibility?
In short, if Cusset puts the record straight (it was time to be reminded, for example, that the majority of members of SOS Racisme were Parisian intellectuals of the left and right-thinking that the action of this asso do was that at the beginning of the dressing), it demonstrated that systematism wears thin (he speaks of islamophobia of French society in a very simplistic and politically correct way ...). Finally, I would like to know where Cusset found the idea that Aron would have been in favor of a combination of the traditional right and the extreme right to counter the left ...
