Styles of cultural activism

the long version

The essays collected in Styles of Cultural Activism make room for the disciplinary activism dismissed by left- and right-wing traditionalists. While traditional "public" scholars insist that specialized, disciplinary approaches impose "politically correct" values or destroy culture's subversive force, these essays defend oppositional practices that are both disciplinary and committed, professional and political. The contributors foster the repressed dialogue of institutional critics committed to professional politics and public scholars committed to progressive social values. The opposed styles of these cultural activists are by nature diverse. In the social theory section, one essay sets forth the advantages that a public perspective based on women's lives provides scientific researchers, while another argues that disciplinary practices and discourses, not the socioeconomic position of oppressed others, constitute and situate the interpreting subject. The section on communism discusses both the legacy of the communist-influenced writers of the 1940s and 1950s, and the importance of post-World War II detective fiction, dystopias, postmodern fiction, and critical theory, through which artists and critics were obligated to tell the negative truths that communist apparatchiks did not want to hear. The ground covered by these essays also reflects this diversity: literary works discussed include the film Bless Their Little Hearts, Abraham Cahan's book The Rise of David Levinsky, Edgar Allan Poe's antebellum novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and the journal Jewish Studies. Other subjects discussed include the ideology of an eighteenth-century survey course, the rhetorical authority of the feminist teacher, readers of the Broadway musical, the incommensurate historical accounts of Europeans and Native Americans, and the mainstream media's one-sided coverage of the Gulf War.