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Pizza and Politics Series
Lunch series held each spring semester, aims to offer a
casual forum for Pomona College professors as well as
visiting professors to discuss their current
research and writing, and for students and other members of
the community to gain greater exposure to these scholarly
efforts. There is always plenty of time reserved for
questions, comments, and debate.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Pizza and Politics
12-1 pm
Carnegie 107, Pomona College
Jack Turner
Assistant Professor, Political Science
University of Washington
"Awakening to Race: Ralph Ellison and
Democratic Individuality"
Ralph Ellison offers crucial insight into the meaning of
conscientious citizenship in American democracy. In doing
so, he follows his nineteenth-century Transcendentalist
forebears ¬ Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman ¬ who have become
key figures in contemporary efforts to theorize liberal
democratic character. At the center of Emersonian ethics is
the idea of ³awakening.² ³Awakening² is the Emersonians¹
name for honest and courageous confrontation with reality.
Ellison broadens the Emersonians¹ vision by insisting that
one cannot be ³well awake² in America without confronting
the ways historical white supremacy shapes one¹s identity
and chances in life. Political theorists who draw
inspiration from the Emersonians in theorizing democratic
individuality need to pay attention to Ellison ¬ for he
demonstrates that one cannot achieve democratic
individuality without awakening to race.
Jack Turner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at
the University of Washington. His work on Tocqueville,
Emerson, and Thoreau has appeared or will soon appear in
POLITICAL THEORY, RARITAN, and POLITY. He is working on a
book entitled AWAKENING TO RACE: AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM AND
RESPONSIBLE CITIZENSHIP. He is also the editor of A
POLITICAL COMPANION TO HENRY DAVID THOREAU (University Press
of Kentucky, forthcoming).
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