Intro -- Contents -- INTRODUCTION: Reconciling Race and Rights -- PART I: OWNERSHIP -- ONE: Defining the Public: Representative Men -- TWO: Property and the Body in Nature -- THREE: The Poetics of Contradiction: Religious and Political Emblems in "The American Scholar -- PART II: POLITICAL OBLIGATION -- FOUR: "Self-Reliance": The Ethical Demand for Reform -- FIVE: Locating the Limits of Consent in "Friendship -- SIX: The Claims of Double-Consciousness: Race, Nationalism, and the Problem of Political Obligation -- PART III: PROTEST -- SEVEN: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Critique of Liberal Nationalism -- EIGHT: Martin Luther King Jr.: Publicity, Disobedience, and the Revitalization of American Democratic Culture -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.

This book traces a provocative line from Emerson's work on race, reform, and identity to work by three influential African- American thinkers--W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cornel West--each of whom offers subtle engagement with both the tradition of written protest and thecritique of liberalism Emerson shaped. Emerson has been cast in recent debate as either an antinomian or an ideologue--as either subversive of institutional controls or indebted to capitalism. Here, Patterson contributes a more nuanced view, probing Emerson's record and its cultural and historicalmatrix to document a fundamental rhetoric of contradiction--a strategic aligning of opposed political concepts--that enabled him to both affirm and critique elements of the liberal democratic model. Drawing richly on topics in political philosophy, law, religion, and cultural history, Pattersonexamines the nature and implications of Emerson's contradictory rhetoric in parts I and II. In part III she considers Emerson's legacy from the perspective of African-American intellectual history, identifying fresh continuities and crucial discontinuities between the canonical strain of protestwriting Emerson helped establish and African-American literary and philosophical traditions.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.