From Emerson to King
Subtitle: democracy, race, and the politics of protest
By: by Anita Haya Patterson.
Series: W.E.B. Dubois Institute; W.E.B. Dubois Institute (Series)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 257
Subjects: Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 -- Influence.; Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 -- Political and social views.; African Americans -- Intellectual life.; Democracy -- United States.; African Americans -- Civil rights.; United States -- Race relations.
Description: 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 the critique 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, Anita Haya Patterson contributes a more nuanced view, probing Emerson's record and its cultural and historical matrix 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.

A work of striking originality and breadth, From Emerson to King: Democracy, Race, and the Politics of Protest will make invigorating reading for scholars and students of American Studies, American political philosophy, and African-American Studies.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-249) and index.