Negative Liberties: Morrison, Pynchon, and the Problem of Liberal IdeologyDuke University Press, 2001 M05 28 - 239 pages Since the nineteenth century, ideas centered on the individual, on Emersonian self-reliance, and on the right of the individual to the pursuit of happiness have had a tremendous presence in the United States—and even more so after the Reagan era. But has this presence been for the good of all? In Negative Liberties Cyrus R. K. Patell revises important ideas in the debate about individualism and the political theory of liberalism. He does so by adding two new voices to the current discussion—Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon—to examine the different ways in which their writings embody, engage, and critique the official narrative generated by U.S. liberal ideology. Pynchon and Morrison reveal the official narrative of individualism as encompassing a complex structure of contradiction held in abeyance. This narrative imagines that the goals of the individual are not at odds with the goals of the family or society and in fact obscures the existence of an unholy truce between individual liberty and forms of oppression. By bringing these two fiction writers into a discourse dominated by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, George Kateb, Robert Bellah, and Michael Sandel, Patell unmasks the ways in which contemporary U.S. culture has not fully shed the oppressive patterns of reasoning handed down by the slaveholding culture from which American individualism emerged. With its interdisciplinary approach, Negative Liberties will appeal to students and scholars of American literature, culture, sociology, and politics. |
Contents
Narrating Individualism | 1 |
Idealizing Individualism | 34 |
Unenlightened Enlightenment | 82 |
Contemplating Community | 141 |
Beyond Individualism | 186 |
NOTES | 197 |
219 | |
231 | |
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abstract African American American culture argues become believe Beloved Bottom Brock Vond calls Cholly claims communitarian conception cosmopolitanism critics critique Crying of Lot democratic individuality depicts describes dispossession dream Emerson Emersonian liberalism essay fact fiction freedom Gravity's Rainbow human idea ideal identity ideology individualist jazz Joel Porte justice justice as fairness Kateb lives Macon Dead magical realism Mason & Dixon methodological individualism Michael Sandel Mondaugen moral Morrison and Pynchon Mouffe national narrative nature negative liberty Oedipa official narrative official story person philosophical political positive liberty possession Pynchon and Morrison race racism Rawls Rawls's Rawlsian Reagan realize revelation rhetoric Ruby rugged individualism San Narciso Sandel self-reliance slave slavery social society suggests Sula Sula's tells theorists theory things thought tion tradition Tristero U.S. culture U.S. individualism vidualism Vineland vision Vond women words writes Zoyd