by Meili Steele (Author)
In Hiding from History, Meili Steele challenges an assumption at the heart of current debates in political, literary, historical, and cultural theory: that it is impossible to reason through history. Steele believes that two influential schools of contemporary thought hide from history : liberal philosophies of public reason as espoused by such figures as Jurgen Habermas, Martha Nussbaum, and John Rawls and structuralism/poststructuralism as practiced by Judith Butler, Hayden White, and Michel Foucault. For Steele, public reasoning cannot be easily divorced from either the historical imagination in general or the specific legacies that shape, and often haunt, political communities.Steele introduces the concept of public imagination-concepts, images, stories, symbols, and practices of a culture-to show how the imaginative social space that citizens inhabit can be a place for political discourse and debate. Steele engages with a wide range of thinkers and their works, as well as historical events: debates over the display of the Confederate flag in public places; Ralph Ellison's exchange with Hannah Arendt over school desegregation in Little Rock; the controversy surrounding Daniel Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners; and arguments about the concept of a clash of civilizations as expressed by Samuel Huntington, Ashis Nandy, Edward Said, and Amartya Sen. Championing history and literature's capacity to articulate the politics of public imagination, Hiding from History boldly outlines new territory for literary and political theory.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 224
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 10 Nov 2005
ISBN 10: 0801443857
ISBN 13: 9780801443855
Hiding from History is an excellent book on a very important issue. It concerns the nature of practical reason, how we deliberate about good and bad, right and wrong. Of course, we deliberate as individuals too, but the issue here is how we deliberate in common. Meili Steele addresses the nature of public reason, highlighting the way in which literature can contribute to rational debate, sometimes in ways that philosophical argument cannot match.
-- Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, McGill UniversityMeili Steele has written a great book, tightly argued, but expansive in scope. He shows how contemporary political thought and action have been handcuffed by the persistent attempt to transcend historical and cultural specificity. His compelling alternative of 'public imagination' avoids multiculturalism's identity fetishism by understanding culture as a process through which selves can reflect upon, reason about, and revise their lives with others.
-- John McGowan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Democracy's Children