Gabriel Rockhill examines the widespread understanding that we are living in an era of globalization that is bound by economic and technological networks and an unquestionable faith in democracy, replacing it with a counter-history that accounts for the diversity of lived experience and offers new ways to imagine the future.

Acknowledgments  xi Introduction. Toward a Counter-History of the Present  1 1. A Specter Is Haunting Globalization  11 2. Are We Really Living in a Technological Era?  33 3. What Is the Use of Democracy? Urgency of an Inappropriate Question  51 Afterword. Taking Charge of the Meanings and Direction of History  103 Notes  109 Bibliography  133 Index  143

"A high level polemic attacking the current enthusiasm for the notion of globalization-which Gabriel Rockhill regards as a feature of the political imaginary of our time-Counter-History of the Present will be discussed alongside work by Jameson, Harvey, and Lyotard." -- Andrew Feenberg, author of The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukacs, and the Frankfurt School "In an era that, according to Lyotard, was supposed to have seen the end of the grand narratives, a grand narrative is spreading according to which globalization, technological development, and democracy are irresistibly marching forward in step. Gabriel Rockhill refutes this apologetic discourse not simply by appealing to growing social polarization, to shantytowns condemned to backwardness, to the toppling of democratically elected governments established by self-styled champions of democracy. Counter-History of the Present is also an occasion for critical reflection on a series of theoretical categories (beginning with that of history) that dominant contemporary thought employs in an apologetic and often Eurocentric sense. In this way, Rockhill's book is thus an important reference point for understanding and transforming the present." -- Domenico Losurdo, author of War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century

"A high level polemic attacking the current enthusiasm for the notion of globalization—which Gabriel Rockhill regards as a feature of the political imaginary of our time—Counter-History of the Present will be discussed alongside work by Jameson, Harvey, and Lyotard."