A More Conservative Place: Intellectual Culture in the Bush Era

by Paul A. Bové

Overview

Identifying the historical antecedents of President George W. Bush’s imperial ambitions and the sources of the reactionary thought and politics that underlie them, Paul A. Bové shows how neoconservatism represents a singular danger to democracy. At the same time, he criticizes the equally disheartening inability of the academic Left to oppose neoconservatives and its tendency to mirror their views instead. Divorced from historical knowledge and intellectual rigor, the neocon mindset reflects a cultural and historical amnesia that feeds on ignorance and conformity. Exposing the threats to national survival inherent in the alliance of right-wing politics and academic tribalism, Bové emphasizes the need to reconnect with the powers of imagination and the complexity of human historical experience. With urgency and passion, Bové shows how the neocons have succeeded in cowing or coopting academic intellectuals and how language has been used and abused for the maintenance and extension of an undemocratic regime.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611683707
Publisher:	Dartmouth College Press
Publication date:	12/08/2012
Series:	Re-Mapping the Transnational: A Dartmouth Series in American Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	261
File size:	666 KB

About the Author

PAUL A. BOVÉ is distinguished professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, author of numerous books, and editor of the journal Boundary 2.

Table of Contents

Preface • Acknowledgments • A Retrospective Introduction • American Universalism and Its Democracy • Area Studies Revisited • The American State Allegorizes the Ruins • Can American Studies Be “Area Studies”? • Critical Poetics: American Resources for Theorizing America • Curiosity in The Education of Henry Adams • Can We Judge the Humanities by Their Future as a Course of Study? • Humanities and the Changing Role of Worldly Engagement The Ineluctability of American Empire • Rights Discourse in the Age of U.S.-China Trade • Historical Humanist, American Style • The Intellectual as a Contemporary Phenomenon • The End of Thinking: Intellectual Failure in the New World Order • Why the Neocons Hate Henry Adams • Notes • Index

What People are Saying About This

Anthony Bogues

“A More Conservative Place is an important book written by a major American intellectual. The Bush era may have been a historic marker in contemporary American life, redefining politics and intellectual culture for years to come. Bové with deft skill and intelligence has illustrated how this era has an afterlife which we need to pay attention to.”