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Marilynne Robinson is arguably one of the most important writers of
our time. Her voice resonates across the richly imagined American
landscapes within which she grounds her stories of love and loss,
alienation and belonging, injustice and redemption. Robinson's
award-winning body of work -- including Gilead, winner of the 2005
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle
Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times
Book Prize; and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle
Award -- has cultivated admiration all over the world, offering
readers new and profound interpretations of the meanings of
transience, presence, convention, and resistance. In A Political
Companion to Marilynne Robinson, Shannon L. Mariotti and Joseph H.
Lane Jr. assemble both rising and established political theorists
to explore the juxtaposition of Robinson's nonfiction works and her
novels, and to examine their connections to contemporary political
issues. The collection analyzes Robinson's writings on American
democracy, community, and freedom, and it includes an engrossing
interview with the author specifically conducted for this volume.
From an exploration of the democratic potential in being a
"housekeeper of homelessness" to a study of models of action
against racial injustice, this volume provides fascinating new
insights into Robinson's work and how it reflects and reassesses
American political culture and theory.
Best known for his two-year sojourn at Walden Pond in
Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau is often considered a recluse
who emerged from solitude only occasionally to take a stand on the
issues of his day. In "Thoreau's Democratic Withdrawal," Shannon L.
Mariotti explores Thoreau's nature writings to offer a new way of
understanding the unique politics of the so-called hermit of Walden
Pond. Drawing imaginatively from the twentieth-century German
social theorist Theodor W. Adorno, she shows how withdrawal from
the public sphere can paradoxically be a valuable part of
democratic politics.
Separated by time, space, and context, Thoreau and Adorno share a
common belief that critical inquiry is essential to democracy but
threatened by modern society. While walking, huckleberrying, and
picking wild apples, Thoreau tries to recover the capacities for
independent perception and thought that are blunted by "Main
Street," conventional society, and the rapidly industrializing
world that surrounded him. Adorno's thoughts on particularity and
the microscopic gaze he employs to work against the alienated
experience of modernity help us better understand the value of
Thoreau's excursions into nature. Reading Thoreau with Adorno, we
see how periodic withdrawals from public spaces are not necessarily
apolitical or apathetic but can revitalize our capacity for the
critical thought that truly defines democracy.
In graceful, readable prose, Mariotti reintroduces us to a
celebrated American thinker, offers new insights on Adorno, and
highlights the striking common ground they share. Their provocative
and challenging ideas, she shows, still hold lessons on how we can
be responsible citizens in a society that often discourages
original, critical analysis of public issues.
German philosopher and social critic Theodor Adorno (1903--1969) is
widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's most influential
thinkers. A leading member of the Frankfurt School, Adorno advanced
an unconventional type of Marxist analysis in books such as
Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Minima Moralia (1951), and
Negative Dialectics (1966). Forced out of Nazi Germany because of
his Jewish heritage, Adorno lived in exile in the United States for
nearly fifteen years. In Adorno and Democracy, Shannon Mariotti
explores how this extended visit prompted a concern for and
commitment to democracy that shaped the rest of his work. Mariotti
analyzes the extensive and undervalued works Adorno composed in
English for an American audience and traces the development of his
political theory during the World War II era. Her unique study
examines how Adorno changed his writing style while in the United
States in order to directly address the public, which lay at the
heart of his theoretical concerns. Despite his apparent contempt
for popular culture, his work during this period clearly engages
with a broader public in ways that reflect a deep desire to
understand the problems and possibilities of democracy as enacted
through the customs and habits of Americans. Ultimately, Adorno
advances a theory of democratic leadership that works through
pedagogy to cultivate a more robust and meaningful practice of
citizenship. Mariotti incisively demonstrates how Adorno's
unconventional and challenging interpretations of US culture can
add conceptual rigor to political theory and remind Americans of
the normative promise of democracy. Adorno and Democracy is an
innovative contribution to critical debates about contemporary US
politics.
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