Pragmatism, Feminism, and Democracy: Rethinking the Politics of American History

by Livingston,James

• ISBN13: 9780415930307
• ISBN10: 0415930308
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2001-08-03
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Pragmatism, Feminism, and Democracyis James Livingston's virtuoso reflection on the period between 1890 and 1930, a primal scene of American history during which a wave of intellectual currents came together--and fell apart--to reorient society. Tying in critical insights on corporate capitalism, consumer culture, populism, and the American Left, Livingston analyzes the intersections and similarities of pragmatism and feminism to yield an original, provocative blend of historiography, feminist theory, and American intellectual history.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Attitudes Toward History	1	(16)
Part 1. Pragmatism, Feminism, and the Politics of Historigraphy
Modern Subjectivity and Consumer Culture: The Revenge of the New Woman	17	(18)
The Terms of Debate
Primal Scenes in American Historiography
Epistemology of Excess
Fighting the ``War of Position'': The Politics of Pragmatism	35	(22)
Pragmatism as a Comic ``Frame of Acceptance''
Cultural Criticism and Corporate Capitalism
Corporate Capitalism and Cultural Politics
The Strange Career of the ``Social Self'':	57	(28)
From Royce to Wahl to Kojeve
Jane Addams, Jessie Taft, and the ``Social Claim''
Dewey and the Self's Determination
Narrative Politics: Richard Rorty at the ``End of Reform''	85	(32)
Marxism or Pragmatism?
Real or Cultural Politics?
Tragedy or Comedy?
Appendix: Memo to the Cultural Left, or, How to Be ``Critical of `the System' and Crazy about the Country''
Part 2. Escaping the ``Economy of Heaven'': William James at the Edges of Our Differences
Hamlet, James, and the Woman Question	117	(26)
Reinstating the Vague
Father and Son
Difference and Equality
The Worst Kind of Melancholy
Unstiffening Our Theories: Pragmatism, Feminism, and the End(s) of Capitalism	143	(40)
The Gender of Modernity
Nietzsche, Butler, James
Marxism in Green, Feminism in Red, Populism in Drag
Corporate Personality, Bureaucratic Rationality, and Modern Feminism
Afterword: No Exit	183	(4)
Notes	187	(38)
Index	225