The Anti-Enlightenment in Popular Culture: Greed, Hate, Star Wars, and Star Trek

In The Anti-Enlightenment in Popular Culture, author George A. Gonzalez argues that the politics of greed and hate lie at the center of the long twentieth century. Using the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises, he postulates that within the Anti-Enlightenment mode of thought, history is a cycle between the stability imposed by elites and the instability created by capitalism and an economy founded on greed. Greed corrupts institutions and victimizes people as well as communities, creating hate, anger, and political instability. In contexts of such instability, elites seeking to maintain or establish political stability direct hate at the ’other’.

This compelling book will appeal to students and researchers in political theory, global politics, and media studies, as well as general readers interested in how popular culture reflects the politics of our times.

George A. Gonzalez (Ph.D., University of Southern California, 1997) is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami. He is the author of Star Trek and Popular Culture: Television at the Frontierof Social and Political Change in the 1960s, Star Trek and Star Wars: The Enlightenment versus the Anti-Enlightenment, and Star Trekand the Philosophy of Entertainment (all published by Peter Lang).