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Reviews tagging 'Racial slurs'
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
2 reviews
benthewriter's review
challenging
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
3.0
This book gives a good overview of the tradition of anti-intellectualism in the United States, from the church, to the federal government, to the academy, and the business world, but with a rather glaring omission, namely a more thoroughgoing analysis of the mutual reinforcement of anti-intellectualism and systemic racism, including the genocide of Native Americans, slavery, and the Jim Crow era. This is compounded by a deep bench of citations of intellectuals throughout the centuries that seems to be entirely white. This book was published in the middle of the Civil Rights Era, so there is really no excuse for this.
That said, the book is more feminist than I expected from something written by a guy in 1963, so at least there's that.
Hofstadter excellently skewers the anti-intellectual underpinnings of reactionary right-wing politics, as well as that found in Tankieism, but there is an ironic reactionary undercurrent in his own arguments that leads me to believe he would be a big Chicago Principles guy were he alive today. He does not fully espouse the Radical Centrism of Classical Liberals™ today, but he shares some of their authoritarian sentiments.
In his introduction he states that this book's genesis lay in unresolved issues that arose from a series of talks he gave and papers he wrote, but in the end the dichotomies facing the intellectual existing within a capitalist milieu remain unresolved in a state of negative dialectics. Which is understandable. There can be no blueprint for intellectualism in a hierarchical world.
That said, the book is more feminist than I expected from something written by a guy in 1963, so at least there's that.
Hofstadter excellently skewers the anti-intellectual underpinnings of reactionary right-wing politics, as well as that found in Tankieism, but there is an ironic reactionary undercurrent in his own arguments that leads me to believe he would be a big Chicago Principles guy were he alive today. He does not fully espouse the Radical Centrism of Classical Liberals™ today, but he shares some of their authoritarian sentiments.
In his introduction he states that this book's genesis lay in unresolved issues that arose from a series of talks he gave and papers he wrote, but in the end the dichotomies facing the intellectual existing within a capitalist milieu remain unresolved in a state of negative dialectics. Which is understandable. There can be no blueprint for intellectualism in a hierarchical world.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs
random19379's review
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Ironically I spent most of this book confused.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, and Classism
Moderate: Sexism
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