Democratizing Dialectics with C.L.R. James

Bibliographic Data

ID23130451
AuthorsAndrew J Douglas (0000-0001-5492-4215, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume70
Issue3
Pages420-441
Publication date2008-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670508000697
OpenAlexW2123084694
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited20

This essay explores the work of C.L.R. James in an effort to rethink the democratic import of dialectical thought. James is best known as a West Indian Marxist and the author of The Black Jacobins , but he is also a deeply democratic thinker and a creative reader of Hegel. Alongside the more orthodox Marxist strand of his thought, James develops a mode of dialectical reflection that is attentive to a sense of democratic uncertainty and that aims to enrich political participation among ordinary citizens. By thinking both with and against James, and by exploiting the ambiguities in his postwar writings on dialectics and American democratic culture, I argue that James inspires a kind of participatory democratic ethos grounded in the language and conceptual resources of Hegelian humanist thought and modern dialectical reflection.

Democracy · Dialectic · Epistemology · Ethos · Hegelianism · Humanism · Marxist philosophy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Law · Marxism and Critical Theory · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political theory and Gramsci

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