Democracy's Children: Intellectuals and the Rise of Cultural Politics - Softcover

McGowan, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801487668 ISBN 13: 9780801487668

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2002

Synopsis

How do American intellectuals try to achieve their political and social goals? By what means do they articulate their hopes for change? John McGowan seeks to identify the goals and strategies of contemporary humanistic intellectuals who strive to shape the politics and culture of their time. In a lively mix of personal reflection and shrewd analysis, McGowan visits the sites of intellectual activity (scholarly publications, professional conferences, the classroom, and the university) and considers the hazards of working within such institutional contexts to effect change outside the academy.

Democracy's Children considers the historical trajectory that produced current intellectual practices. McGowan links the growing prestige of "culture" since 1800 to the growth of democracy and the obsession with modernity and explores how intellectuals became both custodians and creators of culture. Caught between fears of culture's irrelevance and dreams of its omnipotence, intellectuals pursue a cultural politics that aims for wide-ranging social transformations.

For better or worse, McGowan says, the humanities are now tied to culture and to the university. The opportunities and frustrations attendant on this partnership resonate with the larger successes and failures of contemporary democratic societies. His purpose in this collection of essays is to illuminate the conditions under which intellectuals in a democracy work and at the same time to promote intellectual activities that further democratic ideals.

About this title

About the Author:

John McGowan is John W. and Anna H. Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Postmodernism and its Critics, also from Cornell University Press, and Representation and Revelation: Victorian Realism from Carlyle to Yeats.

Review:

"Democracy’s Children is one of the more distinguished recent examples of that curious academic genre, the book of linked essays. It is also one of the most consistently provocative and contrarian academic books I have yet come across."

(Susan Read Baker South Atlantic Review)

"Democracy’s Children is a meditation on how intellectuals might try to achieve their political and social goals in the early twenty-first century."

(William G. Tierney Academe)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0801487668
• ISBN 13: 9780801487668
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 262