Radical legacies : twentieth century public intellectuals in the United States / Arthur Redding.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Redding, Arthur F., 1964-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Intellectuals--United States--History--20th century.
• Intellectuals.
• Dissenters.
• History.
• War and literature.
• United States.
• Literature and society--United States--History--20th century.
• Literature and society.
• War and literature--United States--History--20th century.
• Dissenters--United States--History--20th century.
• Criticism--History--20th century.
• Criticism.
• Radicals--United States.
• Radicals.

Genre:

• History.

Physical Description:

vii, 161 pages ; ǂc 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham : Lexington Books, 2015.

Summary:

What use is thinking? Radical Legacies: Twentieth-Century Public Intellectuals in the United States 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, reviews 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, this study 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. Book jacket.

Contents:

• Introduction: The uselessness of American intellectuals
• Be free!: globalism and democratic pedagogy in Henry James and Henry Adams
• World War I and the origins of the national security state: Mary Antin, Randolph Bourne, and Emma Goldman
• Mary McCarthy's swizzle sticks: food, drink, and consumerism in the American depression
• Herman Melville's Cold War: re-reading C.L.R. James's mariners, renegades, and castaways
• Turning poetry into bread: Langston Hughes, travel-writing, and the professionalization of African-American literary production
• 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:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

• 9781498512664
• 1498512666
• 9781498512688
• 1498512682

OCLC:

921310765