Perry Anderson's The New Old World is out, and from the Verso announcement email comes this vintage 'Perry-ism':
With landmark chapters on France, Germany, Italy and Turkey (the omission of Britain is plainly acknowledged: its ‘history since the fall of Thatcher has been of little moment’).
Ouch! It isn't just because I've been teaching psychoanalysis today that one thinks this might be an omission that is a little 'overdetermined'. After all Anderson was one the pre-eminent thinkers of the 'British question', and can one really say the Blairite re-tooling of Thatcherism plus vestigial social democracy and the authoritarian and philistine elements of labourism has been of 'little moment' - not least in shaping the other European regimes, and making Thatcherism/neo-liberalism 'accessible' to post-social democracy cultures? Perhaps it is largely because I'd like to read Perry's evisceration of contemporary Britain, however.
