Our society is suffering from disillusionment by democracy, the logic of the market and globalisation, incapable of coming up with ideas for the future. What is the way out? Richard Rorty would say: It isnt reason that changes things, but imagination. Using this principle as a starting point, this book sings the praises of disillusioned optimism. It is an essay about language, the idea of generations and the aesthetics of contemporary literature. It is also a denouncement of the mechanisms that have provoked the growing gap between creation and action, ethics and aesthetics, and literature and the public space.