Thoreau and reform

Gougeon, Len

doi:10.1017/ccol0521440378.014

Cited by 8 publications

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“…Thoreau’s political engagement, as studies of his life and writings have shown (Gougeon 1995, 194-214; Harding 1993; Walls 2018), falls into two broader categories. The first is comprised of politically oriented writings published during his lifetime and public lectures that he delivered in Massachusetts and New York.…”

Section: Thoreau and Dialecticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These include “Herald of Freedom,” published in The Dial in 1844; “Wendell Phillips,” published in the Liberator in 1845; the lecture “The Relation of the Individual to the State” (1848), which was published as “Resistance to Civil Government” in 1849; the lecture “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854), later published in several venues including The Liberator and The New York Tribune ; and a series of three speeches on John Brown (2021), published in The Liberator and James Redpath’s Echoes of Harper’s Ferry in 1860. (Gougeon 1995, 199-208). These essays and lectures were both explicitly directed toward a public audience and dealt with the themes of social injustice, reform, and political action.…”

Section: Thoreau and Dialecticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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Section: Thoreau and Dialecticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Thoreau and Dialecticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thoreau’s Dialectic of Dissent and Contemporary Activism

Gilson

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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“…54 But the new law reaffirmed and enlivened inert, existing federal law, and nullified a Massachusetts state law that had previously prohibited officials from assisting in the recapture of fugitive slaves. 55 The 'Bloodhound Act', as it was nicknamed, thus made engineers on the Underground Railroad liable to a punishment of a fine or six months in the newly built 'penitentiaries', named for the penance one would be encouraged to perform on oneself for daring to take such an action as assist a fugitive slave.…”

Section: Emerson's Abolitionist Perfectionismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emerson’s abolitionist perfectionism

Ritter

2021

Philosophy & Social Criticism

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This article aims to rewrite Emerson’s moral perfectionism – his anti-foundationalist pursuit of an always more perfect state of self and society – onto his moral and intellectual participation in the abolitionist movement. I argue that Cavell artificially separated Emerson’s moral perfectionism from his extensive, decades-long abolitionism. The source of Cavell’s oversight is his participation in the long-standing norm of dichotomizing Emerson’s work into the theoretical ‘essays’ and the ‘anti-slavery writings’ or the philosophical and the polemical. Recent scholars of Emerson have questioned and even dismissed this dichotomy, however, while recentring Emerson’s politics in his oeuvre as a whole. They find much to praise, and also plenty to criticize, in Emerson’s abolitionist writings. I follow and extend that scholarly trend here and introduce what I call Emerson’s abolitionist perfectionism as an expansion of Cavell’s influential work on moral perfectionism.

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“…45/ Il n'est guère de meilleur exemple de ce processus que la difficile genèse du Journal officiel que retrace Pascal Gougeon et les luttes que se sont livrés les parlementaires, publicistes et juristes, pour la définition officielle de « l'officiel » qui se sont terminées par la victoire de ces derniers, cf. (Gougeon, 1995).…”

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L'État selon Pierre Bourdieu

Lenoir¹

2012

Sociétés Contemporaines

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Thoreau and reform

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Thoreau’s Dialectic of Dissent and Contemporary Activism

Thoreau’s Dialectic of Dissent and Contemporary Activism

Emerson’s abolitionist perfectionism

L'État selon Pierre Bourdieu

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