The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in AmericaUniversity of Chicago Press, 1996 M01 15 - 278 pages What is the political sensibility of America's middle class? Where did it come from? What kind of life does it hope for? Newfield finds a major source in the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and offers a radically revisionist account of his powerful influence on individualism and democracy in the United States. Emerson's thought encompassed the most important cultural and social changes of his time - a new urban street culture, early versions of the business corporation, experimental communes, the rise of women authors, new forms of labor, a less father-centered family, frontier wars with American Indians, Mexicans, and others, and the controversy over slavery. Locating him at the center not only of philosophical but of national developments, Newfield shows how Emerson taught the middle class to respond to these changes through a form of personal identity best termed "submissive individualism." Newfield identifies a previously unacknowledged connection between liberal and authoritarian impulses in Emerson's work and explores its significance in various domains: domestic life, the changing New England economy, theories of poetic language, homoerotic friendship, and racial hierarchy. This provocative reassessment of Emerson's writing suggests that American middle class culture encourages deference rather than independence. But it also suggests that a better understanding of Emerson will help us develop the stronger, alternative forms of personhood he often desired himself. This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the development and the current limits of liberalism in America. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Liberal Troubles | 15 |
The Submissive Center | 17 |
Nature The Corporatist Solution to Submission | 41 |
The Authoritarian Language of Liberal Religion | 43 |
Democratic Prophecy and Corporate Individualism | 62 |
Individualism and Submission in Private Life | 89 |
Friendly Inequalities Emerson and Straight Homoeroticism | 91 |
Other editions - View all
The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America Christopher Newfield Limited preview - 1996 |
The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America Christopher Newfield No preview available - 1996 |
The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America Christopher Newfield No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
agency American American liberalism antebellum antifoundationalism argued association authoritarian authority auton autonomy Bercovitch chap chapter civic liberal civil claims collective common constituted corporate form corporate individualism corporatism crowd culture democracy democratic depends describes desire economic egalitarian ego ideal Emancipation Emer Emerson Effect Emersonian essay express father feminization freedom Freud Godkin Group Psychology homoeroticism homophobia homosexual Ibid idea ideal identity imagination individualist inequality insists kind labor laissez-faire language liberal liberalism's liberty male friendship mass means middle-class mind moral nature Neoplatonic one's orphic poet political possession race racial racism radical Ralph Waldo Emerson reading rejects relations republican rule says self-reliance sense sexual slavery social equality society sodomy soul sovereignty spirit structure submission suggests superior theory things thought tion tradition Transcendentalism transcendentalist University Press Waldo Emerson Whitman women words York