Read more
Conservatism was born as an anguished attack on democracy. So argues Don Herzog in this arrestingly detailed exploration of England's responses to the French Revolution. Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders ushers the reader into the politically lurid world of Regency England.
Deftly weaving social and intellectual history, Herzog brings to life the social practices of the Enlightenment. In circulating libraries and Sunday schools, deferential subjects developed an avid taste for reading; in coffeehouses, alehouses, and debating societies, they boldly dared to argue about politics. Such conservatives as Edmund Burke gaped with horror, fearing that what radicals applauded as the rise of rationality was really popular stupidity or worse. Subjects, insisted conservatives, ought to defer to tradition--and be comforted by illusions.
Urging that abstract political theories are manifest in everyday life, Herzog unflinchingly explores the unsavory emotions that maintained and threatened social hierarchy. Conservatives dished out an unrelenting diet of contempt. But Herzog refuses to pretend that the day's radicals were saints. Radicals, he shows, invested in contempt as enthusiastically as did conservatives. Hairdressers became newly contemptible, even a cultural obsession. Women, workers, Jews, and blacks were all abused by their presumed superiors. Yet some of the lowly subjects Burke had the temerity to brand a swinish multitude fought back.
How were England's humble subjects transformed into proud citizens? And just how successful was the transformation? At once history and political theory, absorbing and disquieting, Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders challenges our own commitments to and anxieties about democracy.
List of contents
Preface 1A Conservative Inheritance 2Of Coffeehouses and Schoolmasters 3Poison and Antidote 4The Politics of Reason Contempt 5The Politics of the Emotions 6A Guide to the Menagerie: Women and Workers 7A Guide to the Menagerie: Blacks and Jews 8Self and Other 9Faces in the Mirror Standing 10Wollstonecraft's Hair 11The Trouble with Hairdressers 12The Fate of a Trope Index
About the author
Don Herzog teaches law and political theory at the University of Michigan. He is the author of
Without Foundations and
Happy Slaves.
Summary
Conservatism was born as an anguished attack on democracy. This work aims to take the reader into the politically lurid world of Regency England. Weaving social and intellectual history, it brings to life the social practices of the Enlightenment. It challenges our own commitments to and anxieties about democracy.
Additional text
"Herzog's tone is skeptical, constructively flippant--and, above all, readable . . . I know that many people out there would rather eat one of their own feet than read a supposedly academic work like this; but do give it a go. You'll find it's worth it."---Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
