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Full Description
Since the beginning of the 21st century, global warming, terrorism, the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine have created a widespread feeling that the world is an increasingly dangerous place. In response to this situation, it is understandable that many people are inclined to retreat to the safety of their home - the last refuge and safeguard against the savagery of the outside world. But the home is not just a shelter: it is a space that supplants and replaces the world, a wired cocoon that gradually renders any journey to the outside world superfluous.
From our couch, we can enjoy remotely the pleasures once offered by the cinema, the theatre and the café. Everything, from food to love to art, can be delivered to your door. Armed with a smartphone and a Netflix account, why would anyone risk life and limb to venture out to the cinema? Compulsory confinement, the nightmare of the pandemic years, seems to have been replaced by voluntary self-confinement. Fleeing from the cities, working remotely, relinquishing travel and tourism, we risk becoming reclusive creatures that cower at the slightest tremor.
In this witty and spirited book, Pascal Bruckner takes aim at today's voluntary seclusionism and the self-inflicted atrophy that comes with it, tracing its philosophical contours and historical roots. It is no longer the tyranny of lockdowns that threatens us but rather the tyranny of the sofa: will the slipper and the dressing gown be the new symbols of tomorrow's world?
Contents
Preface: The Oblomov Hypothesis
Chapter 1: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse . . .
Chapter 2: The Bankruptcy of Eros?
Chapter 3: Forbidden Travel?
Chapter 4: Is a Banal Life Worth Living?
Chapter 5: The Bovarysme of the Cell Phone
Chapter 6: Cave, Cell, and Bedroom
Chapter 7: The Beauty of One's Own Home
Chapter 8: The Torments and Delights of a Life in Shackles
Chapter 9: The Land of Sleep: Hypnos and Thanatos
Chapter 10: Digital Wonderland or the Triumph of Slouching?
Chapter 11: Diderot's Dressing Gown
Chapter 12: Those Who Have Deserted Modernity
Chapter 13: Weather Sorrow
Chapter 14: Existential Defeatism
Chapter 15: The Extremists of Routine
Conclusion: Fall or Transfiguration?
Notes
