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Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-Century England
This pioneering and highly original study explores critically the nature of class identity by looking at the formation and influence of two men (Edwin Waugh and John Bright) who are taken as representative of what "working class" and "middle class" meant in England in the nineteenth century. The book points the way forward to a new history of democracy as an imagined entity. It represents a deepening of the author's engagement with "post-modernist" theory, in the process offering a critique of the conservatism and complacency of much academic history, particularly in Britain.
- GenresHistory
242 pages, Hardcover
First published October 6, 1994
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 7, 2022
3.5
An insightful and challenging intervention into the historiography surrounding subjectivity and class in nineteenth-century Britain. Joyce’s argument is strong; we need to look to a more varied and complex set of cultural and social factors to understand what ‘the self’ meant in this time. He looks to religious ideas of Providence, as well as to Enlightenment ideas of common humanity (and Joyce does not see this as being relevant purely to the middle classes, as some may conclude). This being said, those who place class at the centre of their analyses may be left unconvinced, as one could claim that Joyce’s examples are unrepresentative. I think the book is strongest in the parts where Joyce compares the lives of Edwin Waugh and John Bright. After that (in the third part), it becomes a bit messy.
An insightful and challenging intervention into the historiography surrounding subjectivity and class in nineteenth-century Britain. Joyce’s argument is strong; we need to look to a more varied and complex set of cultural and social factors to understand what ‘the self’ meant in this time. He looks to religious ideas of Providence, as well as to Enlightenment ideas of common humanity (and Joyce does not see this as being relevant purely to the middle classes, as some may conclude). This being said, those who place class at the centre of their analyses may be left unconvinced, as one could claim that Joyce’s examples are unrepresentative. I think the book is strongest in the parts where Joyce compares the lives of Edwin Waugh and John Bright. After that (in the third part), it becomes a bit messy.
Displaying 1 of 1 review