What's Going On?: The Struggle for Contemporary American Identity

Exploring the backstory of contemporary political polarization, What’s Going On? recognizes that simple stories of blame and uncontested stories of polarization prove themselves to be bad stories that produce bad politics.

This book argues that stories have increasingly become matters of affect rather than meaning—instead of asking what stories mean, we are likely to ask how they make people feel. These stories are cultural tendencies that define the possibilities and limits of political act...