Originating from underworld slang-the domain of hustlers, drug
addicts, and petty thieves-the term "Beat" was short for "beaten
down" or downtrodden. To writer Jack Kerouac it symbolized being at
the bottom of society's hierarchy and looking up. Kerouac
introduced the phrase "Beat Generation" in 1948 to characterize the
underground, anti-conformist youth gathering in New York City at
that time. The Beat Generation consisted of writers, artists, and
activists, and they became a uniquely American cultural phenomenon
with a worldwide influence that introduced new ways of looking at
visual art, music, literature, politics, race and gender issues,
religion, and philosophy. The original Beat Generation writers
include the familiar names of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William
S. Burroughs, and Gregory Corso. Other figures who associated with
the movement are Herbert Huncke, Neal Cassady, Bob Kaufman, Gary
Snyder, Ken Kesey, Philip Whalen, Diane DiPrima, and John Clellon
Holmes, to name a few. The Beats were deeply invested in a
philosophy of life that they drew upon to create literary works and
bohemian lifestyles. Theirs was a constant search for meaning, a
coping with anxiety, alienation, revolutionary protest, and the
struggle to find one's place in the world. In The Beats and
Philosophy editor Sharin N. Elkholy has gathered leading scholars
in Beat studies and philosophy to explore the enduring literary,
cultural, and philosophical contributions of the Beats in a variety
of contexts. Including essays on the drug experience in the works
of Ginsberg and Kerouac, feminism and the Beat heroine in Diane
DiPrima's writings, Gary Snyder's environmental ethics, and the
issue of self in Bob Kaufman's poetry, this collection will explore
the philosophical underpinnings of the Beat generation and will
help explain why it remains one of the most defining movements of
modern American culture. The Beats and Philosophy will appeal to
Beat scholars, philosophers, writers, artists, and fans alike.
Sharin N. Elkholy is assistant professor of philosophy at the
University of Houston-Downtown. She is the author of Heidegger and
a Metaphysics of Feeling: Angst and the Finitude of Being
(Continuum) and her most recent article "Friendship Across
Differences: Heidegger and Richard Wright's Native Son" appears in
Janus Head (Summer/Fall 2007).
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