Emancipating Pragmatism: Emerson, Jazz, and Experimental Writing (Modern & Contemporary Poetics) by Michael Magee

by Michael Magee

A radical rereading of Emerson that posits African- American culture, literature, and jazz as the very continuation and embodiment of pragmatic thought and democratic traditionEmancipating Pragmatism is a radical rereading of Emerson that posits African- American culture, literature, and jazz as the very continuation and embodiment of pragmatic thought and democratic tradition. It traces Emerson's philosophical legacy through the 19th and 20th centuries to discover how Emersonian thought continues to inform issues of race, aesthetics, and poetic discourse.Emerson’s pragmatism derives from his abolitionism, Michael Magee argues, and any pragmatic thought that aspires toward democracy cannot ignore and must reckon with its racial roots. Magee looks at the ties between pragmatism and African-American culture as they manifest themselves in key texts and movements, such as William Carlos Williams’s poetry; Ralph Ellison’s discourse in Invisible Man and Juneteenth and his essays on jazz; the poetic works of Robert Creeley, Amiri Baraka, and Frank O'Hara; as well as the “new jazz” being forged at clubs like The Five Spot in New York.Ultimately, Magee calls into question traditional maps of pragmatist lineage and ties pragmatism to the avant-garde American tradition.

Paperback

First published April 12, 2004

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the time, this book feels like what it is: an academic paper that was reworked into a larger and more expansive argument. That having been said, its scholarship is solid and its breadth impressive. Magee explores the ways in which Emerson's writing, thought, and social activism shows up again as a guide and motivator of 20th century experimental art.

Why is this important? Well, for one thing, the inclusion of Emerson seems like a vital step in understanding how some of the best American writing, "experimental" or not, understands itself. Em wanted his essays to do something to you, the same way that a cup of coffee makes you excited, or a two-hour long bath shrivels up your fingers. So reading "Experience" was supposed to, not only present you with certain ideas, but actually rewire your brain, thereby allowing you to do things you couldn't have done before encountering the essay.

I like this idea, necessary fiction or not. Art is an adaptation, as real and strange as your right arm.

Also, it's as usual great to read a scholarly book written in an accessible and non-specialized style.

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emancipating Pragmatism uncovers the hidden root structure that connects Ralph Waldo Emerson to Harryette Mullen via figures as dazzlingly diverse as John Dewey, Amiri Baraka, Kenneth Burke, Ornette Coleman, William Carlos Williams, Paul Goodman, Frank O’Hara, William James, Susan Howe, and Ralph W. Ellison. What Magee sees as the link between them is a practice he calls “democratic symbolic action”: an insistence that the meaning of democracy--its yen for heterogeneity, improvisation, and collaborative experiment--be enacted at the level of the sentence. Through a lucid riff on the pragmatist tradition, he reminds us that the search for a relationship between aesthetic practice and political action so central to contemporary poetics has been an ongoing obsession in American letters since at least the 1850s.