Tempting it might be, but the idea that culture has become vacuous and banal comes with unsavoury implications Christy Wampole is an essayist and professor at Princeton University. She is the author of Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor (2016) and Degenerative Realism: Novel and Nation in 21st-Century France (2020). Edited bySam Haselby I’ll admit that when I turn on the TV or radio or dig around on the internet, I am often appalled at what I find. When I hear the vapid pronouncements of influencers or the mind-numbing inanity of much of today’s pop culture, my reflex is to become angry and depressed. … Continue reading Can culture degenerate?