Kerry 🇺🇸 Profile picture
Jan 16, 2022 5 tweets 3 min read Read on X
This is from 1992. It's not like DuBois downplayed the connection.

jstor.org/stable/27746506 ImageImage
Yes, because Emerson had already converted everyone who ran in these intellectual circles. But DuBois starts from the assumption that he is inherently in conflict with Emerson, because of the Hegelian interpretation of American history that had already become popular. Image
He was trying to save everyone else the trouble.

jstor.org/stable/363332 Image
A lot of good scholarship scholarship has been done on this connection since then, but it keeps doubling down on the idea that the attraction to this concept couldn't have anything to do with being the kind of person who joined the 19th century MA literary scene.

2016: ImageImage

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More from @kerry62189

May 10, 2023
MIT took a strong stance on free expression by appealing to definitions, etc., derived from the post-Puritan tradition.
First off, the report indicates that it will refer to "freedom of speech"--which it distinguishes from "academic freedom"--as "freedom of expression."

"Academic freedom" was a concept imported from Germany by newer US universities that kind of grated on Harvard and MIT.
While such protections were a big deal in Germany, Harvard and MIT had long defaulted to practices that served the same purpose, so the idea that they now had to import a German concept and procedure in order to secure what they already had was a bit ludicrous.
Read 12 tweets
May 9, 2023
This really was just what most books were like in mid-19c America.

That's why I just stare blankly and say I don't care when someone recites the textbook narrative of religious or theological history and then implies some 19c American's beliefs are "scandalous" or "puzzling."
Like, once again, America was full of religious dissenters and radicals who invented new religions and often utterly and flamboyantly rejected the standard Old World narratives, if they were even fully conversant with them. And many were into elaborate parodies, manifestos, etc.
It's just completely meaningless to point out that a 19c American was heretical, radical, or off-narrative when it came to religion. Most of them were proud to be so. Entirely different mental and social universe, with no oversight.
And they knew their First Amendment rights: Image
Read 5 tweets
May 9, 2023
Yeah. This is a complicated issue, but I increasingly suspect that the pervasive total ignorance about the history here, and the utopianism and naivete that results from it, is itself doing incredible damage.
Drug addiction seems to have been pretty common in the 19/20c US, but because drug use for the most part wasn't harshly policed, legally or socially, and drugs were generally either in less concentrated forms or less potent/deranging in their affects, it wasn't as big of a deal.
That's my understanding, anyway. And I'm not suggesting that pervasive drug addiction is ever "fine," obviously, but that it tended not to be as socially disruptive, and that I don't think drug use/addiction has ever been particularly rare, or that it's likely to become so.
Read 10 tweets
May 8, 2023
This is one of the more important reasons why we can't just move on like nothing happened.

I've heard very little discussion of the issue even now, but it was one of the first things that went visibly wrong.

This was April 23, 2020.

MA officials/doctors started freaking out about the consequences of locals being afraid to seek medical care for ailments other than covid. Which is the reaction that all the messaging had encouraged.

boston25news.com/news/health/ba…
There was a strange period of time early on where MA was desperately broadcasting all these totally off-narrative PSAs, with no acknowledgement of the contradiction. But you can't say that Baker and the hospitals didn't immediately step up here: Image
Read 11 tweets
May 8, 2023
Yeah, much of my interest in this topic comes from the bizarre experience of hearing Trump voters egregiously mischaracterized for years. I get that this sort of thing differs somewhat by state, etc., but they even insist it is a "white working class" thing when discussing MA. Image
In MA, it is most conspicuously an enraged provincial petite bourgeoisie thing, yes. I know this group very well, although its MA incarnation is somewhat atypical.

But it's also, less conspicuously, a professional or wealthy male thing, depending on the industry or profession.
Read 7 tweets
Apr 28, 2023
👍 Image
Exactly. It's a visceral and cultural thing that is of greater importance for GOP candidates, and there's no getting around it so long as voters' views have any significance. Image
It's definitely not gone, but if both parties refuse to cultivate and run with it, or if it lacks the numbers or appeal to support a political culture, then all the grand plans will go down with it. In one way or another, it's supplying most of the coherence that remains to us. Image
Read 4 tweets

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