Writing the Radical Center
William Carlos Williams, John Dewey, and American Cultural Politics
John Beck - Author
2001
Summary
Explores the cultural work of two important early-twentieth-century
writers: the poet William Carlos Williams and the educator/philosopher John
Dewey, both key figures in American democracy.
Placing the philosopher John Dewey and the poet William Carlos Williams
together--two important figures of twentieth-century American culture--this
book examines the ambitions and failings of progressive liberal culture
during the first half of the twentieth century. This book shows that, while
their work ostensibly shares little in common, Williams and Dewey share the
ambition to realize the radical potential of a democratic cultural politics.
Including close readings of texts like Williams's Spring and All, In the
American Grain, and Paterson, and Dewey's Individualism Old and New and Art
as Experience, Beck offers an important contribution to current debates
over the relationship between politics and cultural production.
“…Beck provides conclusive evidence that Williams and Dewey indeed share
a large number of concerns and subscribe to similar positions, and thus cont
ributes to the ongoing dialogue between philosophy and literary studies
over the legacy of Pragmatism.” — American Studies: A Quarterly
"A carefully qualified and nuanced examination of its subject, this book
is sensitive both to the limitations and to the ambitions and motives of the
period and players it examines. The depth of the study and the originality
of pairing Williams and Dewey not to present an influence-study but to
examine what informs and what limits these two as major spokesmen for
Progressivism is refreshing." -- Lisa M. Steinman, author of Made in America:
Science, Technology, and American Modernist Poets
"While there are numerous recent books that seek to reevaluate American
pragmatism in terms of its cultural context, this is the first to explore at
length the considerable analogies between Williams and Dewey." -- Carl
Rapp, author of Fleeing the Universal: The Critique of Post-Rational Criticism
"Dewey and Williams are both shown by Beck to address themselves to the
very issues so topical today, about how much a liberal education can prepare
young people to think for themselves, and to challenge prevailing values
and ideologies. Without the ability of the public to think for itself, our
values will be perverted and materialistic, at the mercy of those committed
to wealth and power." -- K. M. Wheeler, University of Cambridge
John Beck is Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Newcastle
upon Tyne
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