Coming of Age at the End of History

Enfant terrible Camille de Toledo recently burst onto Paris’ intellectual scene with this controversial manifesto that examines counterculture movements from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present. He asks what exactly his generation is protesting against and contemplates how revolt against Western capitalistic values has been neutralized since the time of Francis Fukuyama’s landmark 1989 article, “The End of History?” Analyzing the historical spirit of rebellion from the Surrealists to Jean-Luc Godard to Kurt Cobain, Toledo explains how the diffusion of political power and media co-option have robbed all forms of cultural dissent of their critical potential, leaving behind a new generation of rebels unsure of their cause. In coruscating prose he argues for cultural renewal by reaffirming the poetic over the commercial being, reincarnating the body through nonviolent direct action and identity jamming, nomadism, and embracing the infinity of possibilities.