"The public has, rightly, lost faith in politicians, experts and the media. Progress seems impossible in politics or culture. Massive impersonal bureaucracies, the beguilements of the capitalist market, and ideologies propounded by parties, intellectuals and institutions fill us with disorienting clichés and false identities. We are unable to discern the truth, communicate it effectively to each other, or find an authentic role through which to connect with others and escape the forces that divert our potential for genuine action into unthinking conformity or delusional grandstanding."
"So argued, from the crisis of the Second World War until their deaths in the 1970s, two of the most important intellectuals of the midcentury United States: Harold Rosenberg and Hannah Arendt. Close friends for nearly three decades, their relationship inspired their intertwined theories of action and judgment, and their shared turn towards the role of cultural critic for a mass public."
Public trust in politicians, experts, and the media collapsed amid impersonal bureaucracies, market temptations, and pervasive ideologies that produce clichés and false identities. Citizens struggle to discern truth, communicate it, and find authentic roles for collective action, resulting in conformity or delusion instead of genuine engagement. Harold Rosenberg and Hannah Arendt developed intertwined theories linking action, judgment, aesthetics, and politics during and after the Second World War. Their close friendship informed a shared role as cultural critics and sustained rethinking of 'action' across decades of teaching and writing. Rosenberg played a seminal role in shaping postwar American art culture but has since become obscure.
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