Pragmatist Politics: Making the Case for Liberal Democracy

Acknowledgments

More than twenty years ago, a reader of my Postmodernism and Its Critics told me that the account of democracy I developed in that book as an antidote to poststructuralist politics clumsily reinvented a wheel that John Dewey had already eloquently designed. Steeped in continental philosophy and literary theory in graduate school, I had never read Dewey, or William James. I had been given a healthy dose of Kenneth Burke, but I had little idea of what to do with his work. Chagrined, I started reading Dewey, took to him almost immediately (despite his sometimes monotonous prose), and by 1994 was even claiming in public that I was writing a book on pragmatism. Innumerable false starts later, this book is a version of that project; it partially records the ongoing dialogue in my head between my pragmatist-inflected outlook and an American political and intellectual scene that both energizes and distresses me. You (or at least, I) can’t be writing a book over a period of twenty years without accumulating a lot of debts. Chapters 1 and 2 are drastically reworked versions of essays that originally appeared in Soundings : An Interdisciplinary Journal and The Good Society, respectively, and the portions of those essays salvaged here are reprinted with their kind permission. This particular version of my pragmatist thoughts really came into focus when, at the invitation of Liang Ya-Liou and Charles Sheperdson , I delivered a series of lectures at National Taiwan University in 2007. Subsequent invitations from Jack Selzer, Robert Caserio, Jeff Nealon, and Michael Bérubé at Penn State; Meili Steele at the University of South Carolina; David Ricks and Max Saunders at Kings College, London; John Lucaites, Robert Ivie, Phaedra Pezzullo, Bill Rasch, and Ted Striphas at Indiana University; and Dilip Gaonkar and Robert Hariman at Northwestern University allowed me to benefit from talking with audiences whose engaged skepticism was all a Acknowledgments 189 speaker could hope for. May they find this written text, strengthened by their objections, more persuasive. So many students and colleagues in Chapel Hill contributed in so many ways to my work that I am reduced to just listing their names here in lieu of more particular thanks: Susan Bickford, Mike Bogucki, Bob Cantwell, Graham Culbertson, Cindy Current, Eric Downing, Nick Gaskill, Darryl Gless, Jennifer Ho, Jordynn Jack, Joy Kasson, David Kiel, Lloyd Kramer, Steve Leonard, Mike Lienesch, Andy Perrin , Heath Sledge, Jeff Spinner-Havel, James Thompson, and Jane Thrailkill. I thank the Chapel Hill stalwarts without whom my daily life there is unimaginable: David Brehmer, Randi Davenport, Alan Hirsch, Megan Matchinske, John Rubin, Joyce Rudinsky, and Lynn York. Special thanks to Patrick Dowd, who read and commented on the entire manuscript (while teaching English in northern Thailand). That I had the time to work on this book at allis a tribute to the hard-working staff of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities (IAH) at UNC: Kirsten Beattie, Jean Chandler, Mary Flanagan, Megan Granda, Martha Marks, Chris Meinecke, and Jeanine Simmons. I trust they know how much I appreciate their dedication and unflagging good spirits even under sometimes hard conditions. I also benefited from a year’s leave provided by UNC and attributable to the generous support of my work (both as administrators and as colleagues) by Beverly Taylor, Bill Andrews, and Bruce Carney. A special thanks to the Kenan Fellowship that funded part of my leave. What the Kenan family has done for UNC—and for higher education in America more generally—is an inspiring story that illustrates much of what is right in our country. My leave would have been completely impossible if Bill Balthrop had not been ready, and more than able, to step in as interim director at the IAH. I take this opportunity to thank four special friends of the institute, all of whom contribute greatly to making Carolina a wonderful place to teach and work: Julia Grumbles, Robert Hackney, Barbara Hyde, and John O’Hara. Once again, I joyfully acknowledge my great debt to John W. Burress III and C. Knox Massey Jr., who endowed the Ruel Tyson chair that I am privileged to hold. My debts to Ruel, my mentor in all things great and small, can hardly be told, no less repaid. Beyond Chapel Hill, I think of my brother and sisters, and of a group of friends who create my faith in the conviviality I celebrate 190 Acknowledgments in...