Cover; Half-title; Title; Copyright; Contents; Preface; Dedication; Introduction Safe; Safety: the ultimate high; Forever young; Arrested development; Impasse; The end of ideology and the cult of the loser; We know what's good for you; New power generation; 'Clinton-lite' and British victim culture; Harvey, Gallagher and the Ecstasy debate; Interactivity; How can we grow up?; Low expectations; Retreatism; Notes; Chapter 1 Alienation; New notion/new style; The birth of the cool; Alien nation goes pop; Snapshot: I wanna be a Mod; Snapshot: Proto-punk; We're all alienated now
Political as well as personalThe end of politics?; The uncommitted; Snapshot: Renouncing alienation; Positive and negative; Powerlessness; Arrested development; Destructive alienation; Suspicious minds; Fear and loathing; The stillbirth of the cool; The lost cause of the rebel; Alienation and the new establishment; Notes; Chapter 2 Now; Senses over intellect; Repressive rationality; Holy nonsense; Authentic and immediate; Snapshot: Who needs objectivity?; The moment is now; Snapshot: On the One; Movement and the moment; The politics of now; The narrowness of now; Snapshot: Off the One
Captivated by the momentEgo death; Notes; Chapter 3 The Child; Stars of the nursery; The child as rebel; Children's crusade; Infantilization; Radical children; Playpower; The search for innocence; Abdication; Absurd; The ubiquitous child; Retreating to the child; Dissatisfaction; Submission; Contemporary diagnoses of Peter-Pan-itis; The prevention of adult interaction; Notes; Chapter 4 Vulnerable; Damaged but beautiful; Encounter culture; Therapeutic radicalism; Snapshot: Electric crucifixion; Miserabilism; Autopathology; Snapshot: Hunched; The vulnerable politician; Notes; Chapter 5 Madness
'Embryonic storm-trooper'Neurotica; The fad for mad; 'Schizoid subterfuges'; Snapshot: Marxism, tendency Harpo; Taking over the asylum; Disbelief as a form of authority; The familiar imbecile; Snapshot: On the edge; Notes; Chapter 6 Spirit; Self-love; Beautiful losers; Submission; Communal degradation; DIY spirituality; Stale spirits; Inactivity; Inactive activity; Manipulation; Surrender; Representing inadequacy; Notes; Chapter 7 Irony; The absurd; The ironic condition; Swinging camp; Black camp; Shrinking subjectivity; Shock to schlock; Snapshot: Radical?; Anti-ironists
Snapshot: Showing offSnapshot: Intellectual slumming; Self-preservation/self-destruction; Snapshot: Ironic circles; Ironic humanism?; Spiralling irony/subsiding subjectivity; Snob irony; Consuming irony; Spontaneously reproducing; Notes; Chapter 8 Wiggas; Black therapy for whites; Roots; Mythologies; Smothered subjectivity; Crow Jim; Snapshot: Who's fooling whom?; Snapshot: Anthropology; Different drums; Notes; Chapter 9 Limits; Rebellion as limitation; Overwhelmed; Power, no thanks; Limited terrain; Radical quietism; Alienation as limitation; Diminishing dissent; The 'incidental' revolution
