Radical Legacies

Twentieth-Century Public Intellectuals in the United States

Arthur Redding (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

172 Seiten

2017
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-1-4985-1268-8 (ISBN)

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Addressing the problems of critical dissent during wartime, the contemporary crisis of the humanities under neoliberalism, and the perils of consumer culture and popular taste, this book examines the ways in which modern American thinkers have intervened in the public sphere and to mediate relations between institutions and intellectual production.

What use is thinking? This study addresses the ways in which modern American thinkers have intervened in the public sphere and attempted to mediate relations between social and political institutions and cultural and intellectual production. Chapters on both well-known (Henry Adams, Langston Hughes, C. Wright Mills, Angela Davis) and neglected (Randolph Bourne, Mary McCarthy, Paul Goodman) public intellectuals considers how these figures have address a range of problems, including the dangers and difficulty of critical dissent thought during wartime, the contemporary crisis of the humanities under neoliberalism, the legacy of American anti-intellectualism, academic professionalism, and the perils of consumer culture and popular tastes. This book reviews in as critically sympathetic a manner as possible a select few of the minor and major currents of twentieth-century American radical thinking in order to see where they might take us, and how they inflect our current social and intellectual predicaments. Arguing that any "use-value" theory of intellectual production is limiting, Radical Legacies endeavors to maintain and expand a space and reassert an argument for the importance of sustained critical reflection on our collective dilemmas today. It assesses a practice of thought that is engaged, committed, involved, and timely, without being necessarily “practical” or even useful.

Arthur Redding is professor of English at York University in Toronto.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Uselessness of American Intellectuals.
Chapter One: Be Free!: Globalism and Democratic Pedagogy in Henry James and Henry Adams
Chapter Two: World War I and the Origins of the National Security State: Mary Antin, Randolph Bourne, and Emma Goldman
Chapter Three: Mary McCarthy’s Swizzle Sticks: Food, Drink, and Consumerism in the American Depression
Chapter Four: Herman Melville’s Cold War: Re-reading C. L. R. James’s Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways
Chapter Five: Turning Poetry into Bread: Langston Hughes, Travel-writing, and the Professionalization of African-American Literary Production
Chapter Six: Legacies of the New Left: Paul Goodman, C. Wright Mills, and Angela Davis
Conclusion: Thought during Wartime: American Public Intellectuals in the Twenty-first Century
Notes
Bibliography

Erscheinungsdatum	10.05.2021
Sprache	englisch
Maße	148 x 232 mm
Gewicht	268 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Anthologien
	Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-4985-1268-2 / 1498512682
ISBN-13	978-1-4985-1268-8 / 9781498512688
Zustand	Neuware