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    Allegories of America

    Narratives, Metaphysics, Politics

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    Author(s)
    Dolan, Frederick M.
    Language
    English
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    Abstract
    Allegories of America offers a bold idea of what, in terms of political theory, it means to be American. Beginning with the question What do we want from a theory of politics? Dolan explores the metaphysics of American-ness and stops along the way to reflect on John Winthrop, the Constitution, 1950s behavioralist social science, James Merrill, and William Burroughs. The pressing problem, in Dolan's view, is how to find a vocabulary for politics in the absence of European metaphysics. American political thinkers, he suggests, might respond by approaching their own theories as allegories. The postmodern dilemma of the loss of traditional absolutes would thus assume the status of a national mythology—America's perennial identity crisis in the absence of a tradition establishing the legitimacy of its founding. After examining the mid-Atlantic sermons of John Winthrop, the spiritual founding father, Dolan reflects on the authority of the Constitution and the Federalist. He then takes on questions of representation in Cold War ideology, focusing on the language of David Easton and other liberal political "behaviorists," as well as on cold War cinema and the coverage of international affairs by American journalists. Additional discussions are inspired by Hannah Arendt's recasting of political theory in a narrative framework. here Dolan considers two starkly contrasting postwar literary figures—William S. Burroughs and James Merrill—both of whom have a troubled relationship to politics but nonetheless register an urgent need to articulate its dangers and opportunities. Alongside Merrill's unraveling of the distinction between the serious and the fictive, Dolan assesses the attempt in Arendt's On Revolution to reclaim fictional devices for political reflection.
    URI
    https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/62097
    Keywords
    Political science and theory; History of the Americas; Civics and citizenship
    DOI
    10.7298/53zb-bw87
    ISBN
    9781501726231, 9781501726248, 9780801430060, 9781501727801, 9781501726231, 9781501726248
    Publisher
    Cornell University Press
    Publisher website
    https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/
    Publication date and place
    Ithaca, 1995
    Grantor
    • National Endowment for the Humanities - [...] - Open Book Program
    Imprint
    Cornell University Press
    Series
    Contestations,
    Classification
    Political science and theory
    Pages
    248
    Rights
    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
    • Imported or submitted locally

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    License

    • If not noted otherwise all contents are available under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

    Credits

    • logo EU
    • This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 683680, 810640, 871069 and 964352.

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