Longing, Nostalgia, and Golden Age Politics

The American Jeremiad and the Power of the Past

Bibliographic Data

ID6324299
AuthorsA R Murphy (0000-0002-5569-6098, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume7
Issue1
Pages125-141
Publication date2009-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePerspectives on Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1537-5927 • E-ISSN: 1541-0986
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1537592709090148
OpenAlexW1989914046
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited50

I assess several politically powerful ways of drawing on the past in the search for solutions to problems in the present. To probe these dynamics, I turn to the American jeremiad, a longstanding form of political rhetoric that explicitly invokes the past and laments the nation's falling-away from its virtuous foundations. I begin by focusing on the Christian Right's traditionalist jeremiad, which offers both nostalgic and Golden Age rhetoric in its assessment of the United States' imperiled national promise. I argue that, despite differences in the historical location of their ideals and the significant rhetorical power that they bring to political life, such nostalgic and Golden Age narratives represent a constraining political ideal, one ultimately incapable of doing justice to an increasingly diverse American society. I argue furthermore that there is another strand of the American jeremiad and conclude by sketching a different way of drawing on the past, a progressive jeremiad epitomized by the thought of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Such a jeremiad is also deeply rooted in the American tradition and offers a far more promising contribution to a diverse and pluralistic American future

Aesthetics · Art · Economic Justice · Environmental ethics · Ideal (ethics · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Theology · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Law · Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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