Race, Culture, and the Intellectuals, 1940–1970 - Softcover

King, Richard H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801880661 ISBN 13: 9780801880667

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004

Synopsis

Toward the end of World War II, scholars and writers reeling from the politics of racism stressed the unity of humankind, but by the early 1970s, dominant voices proclaimed ongoing diversity―sometimes irreconcilable antagonism―among human cultures. To study this transition from universalism to cultural particularism, Richard King focuses on the arguments of major thinkers, movements, and traditions of thought, attempting to construct a map of the ideological positions that were staked out and an intellectual history of this transition.

King's range is international, from North American and European concerns, to the Negritude movement of Africa and the Caribbean, to arguments raised at the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. And his comparisons embrace a diversity of subjects, such as anti-Semitism and anti-black racism, and political, psychological, and sociological models of oppression, accommodation, and resistance. This study explores the intellectual roots of current debates over such topics as affirmative action, multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and humanism. Among thinkers who receive sustained attention are Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Bruno Bettelheim, Harold Cruse, Stanley Elkins, Ralph Ellison, Frantz Fanon, E. Franklin Frazier, Raul Hilberg, Max Horkheimer, C. L. R. James, Albert Memmi, Albert Murray, Gunnar Myrdal, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Richard Wright.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard H. King is a professor of American intellectual history at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom and the editor, with Helen Taylor, of Dixie Debates: Perspective on Southern Cultures. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 1997–1998.

Review:

A sophisticated description and analysis of traditions of thought during a period when notions of race were under intense reconsideration.

(Jewish Book World)

A deeply researched and valuable account of some of the most troubling questions of the second half of the twentieth century.

(John P. Jackson, Jr. Journal of Southern History)

Covers such widespread terrain and does so in such a compelling fashion. If you are looking for an overview of the key thinkers and debates about racism and antisemitism in the aftermath of the Holocaust... the essential starting point is this book.

(Jonathan Judaken Patterns of Prejudice)

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0801880661
• ISBN 13: 9780801880667
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416