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Autobiography, from Frederick Douglass's
Narrative of the Life to J.D. Vance's
Hillbilly Elegy, has long been a popular genre that both authors and readers have utilized to understand particular political moments. As this book argues, such narratives have also contributed to the development of American political thought, despite the fact that the field has not taken autobiography seriously as political theory in its own right. This book considers the political contexts in which Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Henry Adams, Emma Goldman, and Whittaker Chambers wrote their autobiographies to better understand not only the political problems to which autobiographical works can be a solution, but the broader appeal of such claims of experience to the everyday life of democratic politics.
List of contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: A Political Autobiography
- Chapter 1: Benjamin Franklin's Imperfections
- Chapter 2: Frederick Douglass, from Narration to Denunciation
- Chapter 3: Henry Adams on the Ends of Education
- Chapter 4: The Adversity and Empathy of Emma Goldman
- Chapter 5: Whittaker Chambers and the Confessions of Ex-Communists
- Conclusion: Autobiography on the Horizon
- Notes
- References
- Index
About the author
Nolan Bennett is an Assistant Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. He is a scholar of American political thought, and his research considers why and to what effect historical actors and movements ground their claims for democratic justice in personal experience. He recovers genres like autobiography, slave narrative, and prison writing as appeals to popular authority and representation not found in state or electoral politics. Nolan is particularly interested in issues of prison reform and punishment in the United States, inspired by the long history of prison writing, and with a committed interest to teaching in carceral spaces.
Summary
Why have so many figures throughout American history proclaimed their life stories when confronted by great political problems? The Claims of Experience provides a new theory for what makes autobiography political throughout the history of the United States and today.
Across five chapters, Nolan Bennett examines the democratic challenges that encouraged a diverse cast of figures to bear their stories: Benjamin Franklin amid the revolutionary era, Frederick Douglass in the antebellum and abolitionist movements, Henry Adams in the Gilded Age and its anxieties of industrial change, Emma Goldman among the first Red Scare and state opposition to radical speech, and Whittaker Chambers amid the second Red Scare that initiated the anticommunist turn of modern conservatism.
These historical figures made what Bennett calls a "claim of experience." By proclaiming their life stories, these authors took back authority over their experiences from prevailing political powers, and called to new community among their audiences. Their claims sought to restore to readers the power to remake and make meaning of their own lives.
Whereas political theorists and activists have often seen autobiography to be too individualist or a mere documentary source of evidence, this theory reveals the democratic power that life narratives have offered those on the margins and in the mainstream. If they are successful, claims of experience summon new popular authority to surpass what their authors see as the injustices of prevailing American institutions and identity. Bennett shows through historical study and theorization how this renewed appreciation for the politics of life writing elevates these authors' distinct democratic visions while drawing common themes across them. This book offers both a method for understanding the politics of life narrative and a call to anticipate claims of experience as they appear today.
Additional text
Bennett shows us that, throughout American history, Americans have found a creative way to challenge and expand the 'we' [of 'We the People']...they have done so through autobiography."-Susan McWilliams Barndt, Perspectives on Politics
