Shattered dreams, infinite hope a tragic vision of the civil rights movement / Brandon M. Terry.
| Author/creator | Terry, Brandon M. author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2025 |
| Copyright Date | ©2025 |
| Description | 549 pages ; 25 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Introduction -- Part one: A critical theory of exemplarity, judgment, and narrative. On exemplarity and disclosure: The experience of exemplarity -- Between aesthetics and history: Kant and the problem of judgment -- The defeated cause: judgment, history, and narrative -- Part two: Romance. The romance of civil rights: from Red Sea to ruins -- The tangible ruins of our present: the crisis of authority in Black political life -- Beyond silence and romance: Rawls, Mills, and the tasks of political philosophy and critique -- Part three: After romance. The changing same: ironic history and its politics in African American critical thought -- The tragic vision: the meaning of long civil rights movement history -- Conclusion. |
| Abstract | "We are all familiar with the romantic vision of the civil rights movement: a moment when heroic African Americans and their allies triumphed over racial oppression through courageous protest, forging a new consensus in American life and law. But what are the effects of this celebratory storytelling? What happens when a living revolt against injustice becomes an embalmed museum piece? In this innovative work, Brandon Terry develops a novel theory of interpretation to show how competing accounts of the civil rights movement circulate through politics and political philosophy. The dominant narrative is romantic. This 'arc of justice' narrative is found in popular histories, the speeches of Barack Obama, and even the writings of the liberal philosopher John Rawls. Despite being public orthodoxy, these romantic visions are exhausted and unpersuasive on their own terms. The breakdown of the authority of this history of justice has created space for a rival ironic mode, embodied in the political ideas of Afropessimism. While offering a sympathetic critique, Terry ultimately finds Afropessimist thought self-undermining and unworkable. Instead, he argues, the civil rights movement is best understood in tragic terms. By challenging the attachment to triumphant pasts, Terry demonstrates that tragedy exemplifies what the civil rights movement has been and can still be. Provocative and original, Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope offers an optimistic political vision without naïveté, to train our judgment and resilience in the face of reasonable despair"-- Provided by Amazon. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version http://id.loc.gov/entities/relationships/onlineversion Terry, Brandon M. Shattered dreams, infinite hope Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2025 9780674299702 |
| Issued in other form | ebook version : 9780674299702 |
| Genre/form | Informational works. |
| LCCN | 2025002197 |
| ISBN | 9780674271289 |
| ISBN | 0674271289 hardcover |
| ISBN | electronic publication |
| ISBN | electronic book |
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