Books Culture of complaint

In this passionate and witty critique, Australian-born art critic Robert Hughes examines what he saw as the decline of 20th-century American culture. Based on a series of lectures, the book argues that American society has developed a "culture of complaint" characterized by the glorification of victimhood, the rise of identity politics, and a retreat from public responsibility.

Hughes skewers what he calls "political correctness" on the left and "patriotic correctness" or populist demagoguery on the right, seeing both as two sides of the same puritanical coin that inhibit true intellectual debate. He makes a case for a genuine, non-ideological multiculturalism that enriches society through the interaction of different cultures, rather than the cultural separatism he observes in some academic circles.