David Balzer: This is Not New — Art, Culture, and the Promise of Change

What does it mean to call something “new”? Why is Western art and culture, even after postmodernism, still so obsessed with the concept? What are the consequences of relying on culture to bring about social change?

In this provocative book, David Balzer argues that Western culture was never designed to produce truly new or original artefacts. Rather, we move from fixation to fixation, trend to trend—a cycle of creation and destruction with deep origins in Judeo-Christianity and the paganism that preceded it. The culture industry promises its own form of change while preserving existing systems of power exactly as they are.

From the New Jerusalem to the New Left, from Vannevar Bush to Kate Bush, This is Not New asks difficult questions about the role of culture not in making change, but in delaying—even preventing—it.