Thoreau and his audience

Fink, Steven

doi:10.1017/ccol0521440378.007

The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau 1995

DOI: 10.1017/ccol0521440378.007

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Thoreau and his audience

Steven Fink¹

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“…4Much has been written about Thoreau as a lecturer and Thoreau’s relationship to his audience, including work by Stanley Cavell (1974), Steven Fink (1995), Walter Harding (1951), George Kateb (1992), Jennet Kirkpatrick (2016), and Jack Turner (2005), among others. Some of this work makes the case that all of Thoreau’s work, including writings that do not directly address political issues, should be seen as political because they were intended to reach the general public.…”

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Thoreau’s Dialectic of Dissent and Contemporary Activism

Gilson

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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Recent scholarship on Thoreau’s thought has pushed in two opposing directions: some have maintained that Thoreau’s withdrawals from political engagement were actually intended to serve democratic ends, whereas others have argued that Thoreau’s political engagement was a lapse in his better judgment. In this essay, I contend that neither interpretation of Thoreau’s thought fully captures the roles that political engagement and disengagement played in his life as a dissident. Instead, via an examination of Thoreau’s “Walking” and his reform papers, I argue that Thoreau modeled a dialectical approach to dissent, where the “antithesis” of withdrawal served as a specific antidote to the personal toll of the “thesis” of political action. As I show, Thoreau’s attention to the potential costs of radical dissent makes his dialectical model especially relevant for those for whom the costs are highest, including contemporary women activists of color. For these women, normalizing a practice of continual disengagement from activism might benefit them in ways that collaborative solidarity cannot.

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confidence: 99%

Thoreau’s Dialectic of Dissent and Contemporary Activism

Gilson

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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From the Field: Walt Whitman's Periodical Poetry

Belasco¹

2004

amp

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Editorial Savoir Faire: Thoreau Transforms His Journal into “Slavery in Massachusetts”

Petrulionis

1999

Resources for American Literary Study

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Thoreau and his audience

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Thoreau’s Dialectic of Dissent and Contemporary Activism

Thoreau’s Dialectic of Dissent and Contemporary Activism

From the Field: Walt Whitman's Periodical Poetry

Editorial Savoir Faire: Thoreau Transforms His Journal into “Slavery in Massachusetts”

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