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The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America
Breaking new ground in cultural, political, and social history, Rossinow tells the story of the new left-wing movement that emerged in the 1960s from an innovative perspective: illustrating the spiritual dimension of student activism and providing the first account "from the bottom up" -- as well as linking local developments to the national scene.
520 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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January 16, 2018
Rossinow's project is too turn the bottom up approach of new left history onto the movement itself to rescue the movement from now stale arguments about the connections between the new and old left. He succeeds in bringing the movement back into the mainstream of conversations about American history and getting us out of the trap of the bankruptcy of the left in a post-cold war world. If these people were "from America," that is to say, if their protest was grounded in the larger discourse on democracy, then maybe we can use this as a project to stop repudiating the American past as a tragic denouement in which real change never really happens. Radical politics, in this account, is in the mainstream of American political culture.
In his "Introduction: From the Age of Anxiety to the Politics of Authenticity," Rossinow makes an intriguing claim:
To segregate political radicalism from the mainstream of political and cultural history is to obscure the close and tangled connections between the new left and larger strands of political and cultural development in the twentieth-century United States - strands such as social gospel liberalism and Christian evangelicalism, cold war liberalism and Western libertarianism, liberal feminism and the search for authenticity. My investigation of these connections provides an alternative genealogy for the new left. Looking at the new left from the ground up and bringing it into focus as it appeared in and from the provinces, this book provides, in a sense, the first new left history of the new left. (p. 11)
Instead of looking at Berkeley, Columbia or Madison, Rossinow focuses on the evolution of the new left at the University of Texas at Austin. In the first half of the book he covers the new left up to the point where the focus turned to anti-Vietnam protest. Part One Chapters include "This Once Fearless Land: Secular Liberals Under Right-Wing Rule"; "Breakthrough: The Relevance of Christian Existentialism"; "The Issues of Life: The University YMCA-YWCA and Christian Liberalism"; "To Be Radical Now: Civil Rights Protest and Leftward Movement". As the chapter titles suggest he focuses on the role of Christian social movements on the origins of new left during the early years of the Cold War. In a state where right wing "homemade fascists" were all too ready to persecute the left, Christian or not, the YMCA-YWCA movement provided the space in which those dedicated to the social application of liberal Christianity to try out their ideas. As Sara Evans has argued on the origins of women's liberation, women were a key force in the early awakenings of liberal Protestantism's postwar social activism.
Though we know more generally of the connection between the civil rights movement and student radicalism, Rossinow also shows the importance of women to the early student movement. Showing the centrality of Sandra "Casey" Hayden early in the protest movement in Texas helps us historicize the marginalization of women in the national SDS. The feminist critique of the new left hence appears as a re-assertion of earlier involvement rather than a new awakening to rights freshly discovered by women's activism in basically male movements.
The National SDS organization forms one of the foci of the second half of the book. By moving to a 90% focus on Vietnam later in the decade, the student left in the SDS (both locally in Austin and Nationally) tied itself to an issue whose import was transient.
The hard truth is that the new left's entanglement with the war and the anti-war movement helped derail its initial project of developing a movement for fundamental political change, rooted in a thorough critique of American life ... The sense of desperate urgency produced by the war led the left away from long-term strategic thinking, toward displays of anger that got it nowhere. (p. 246)
By focusing so heavily on Vietnam, the student left helped the right in its quest to marginalize the left as a whole as irrelevant to the concerns of modern life. As the new left moved to embrace Marxism and the civil rights movement moved to embrace black power, an increasingly fragmented world was appearing. The move toward this position is documented in Part Two Chapters include "These People Were From America: The New Left Revisited"; "Against Rome: The New Left and the Vietnam War"; "This Whole Screwy Alliance: The New Left and the Counterculture"; "The Revolution is Yet to Come: The Feminist Left" Ending with the consideration of the feminist left, he points the way for the left to reclaim its heritage by embracing the feminist critique of American society. In his "Epilogue: From the Politics of Authenticity to the Politics of Identity," he makes the point that the new left was essentially a reform movement, bound in time by the events of the 60s and 70s. As the new left retreated further and further into local community building it gave up its claims to reshaping America in a more democratic mold, and eventually the new left retreated entirely to allow its members to cultivate their own gardens.
Like all reform movements, the New Left cannot be brought back to life (except perhaps by the historian's craft). This movement is now history, but the quest to reform American life will go on. The problems they wrestled with are still with us.
In his "Introduction: From the Age of Anxiety to the Politics of Authenticity," Rossinow makes an intriguing claim:
To segregate political radicalism from the mainstream of political and cultural history is to obscure the close and tangled connections between the new left and larger strands of political and cultural development in the twentieth-century United States - strands such as social gospel liberalism and Christian evangelicalism, cold war liberalism and Western libertarianism, liberal feminism and the search for authenticity. My investigation of these connections provides an alternative genealogy for the new left. Looking at the new left from the ground up and bringing it into focus as it appeared in and from the provinces, this book provides, in a sense, the first new left history of the new left. (p. 11)
Instead of looking at Berkeley, Columbia or Madison, Rossinow focuses on the evolution of the new left at the University of Texas at Austin. In the first half of the book he covers the new left up to the point where the focus turned to anti-Vietnam protest. Part One Chapters include "This Once Fearless Land: Secular Liberals Under Right-Wing Rule"; "Breakthrough: The Relevance of Christian Existentialism"; "The Issues of Life: The University YMCA-YWCA and Christian Liberalism"; "To Be Radical Now: Civil Rights Protest and Leftward Movement". As the chapter titles suggest he focuses on the role of Christian social movements on the origins of new left during the early years of the Cold War. In a state where right wing "homemade fascists" were all too ready to persecute the left, Christian or not, the YMCA-YWCA movement provided the space in which those dedicated to the social application of liberal Christianity to try out their ideas. As Sara Evans has argued on the origins of women's liberation, women were a key force in the early awakenings of liberal Protestantism's postwar social activism.
Though we know more generally of the connection between the civil rights movement and student radicalism, Rossinow also shows the importance of women to the early student movement. Showing the centrality of Sandra "Casey" Hayden early in the protest movement in Texas helps us historicize the marginalization of women in the national SDS. The feminist critique of the new left hence appears as a re-assertion of earlier involvement rather than a new awakening to rights freshly discovered by women's activism in basically male movements.
The National SDS organization forms one of the foci of the second half of the book. By moving to a 90% focus on Vietnam later in the decade, the student left in the SDS (both locally in Austin and Nationally) tied itself to an issue whose import was transient.
The hard truth is that the new left's entanglement with the war and the anti-war movement helped derail its initial project of developing a movement for fundamental political change, rooted in a thorough critique of American life ... The sense of desperate urgency produced by the war led the left away from long-term strategic thinking, toward displays of anger that got it nowhere. (p. 246)
By focusing so heavily on Vietnam, the student left helped the right in its quest to marginalize the left as a whole as irrelevant to the concerns of modern life. As the new left moved to embrace Marxism and the civil rights movement moved to embrace black power, an increasingly fragmented world was appearing. The move toward this position is documented in Part Two Chapters include "These People Were From America: The New Left Revisited"; "Against Rome: The New Left and the Vietnam War"; "This Whole Screwy Alliance: The New Left and the Counterculture"; "The Revolution is Yet to Come: The Feminist Left" Ending with the consideration of the feminist left, he points the way for the left to reclaim its heritage by embracing the feminist critique of American society. In his "Epilogue: From the Politics of Authenticity to the Politics of Identity," he makes the point that the new left was essentially a reform movement, bound in time by the events of the 60s and 70s. As the new left retreated further and further into local community building it gave up its claims to reshaping America in a more democratic mold, and eventually the new left retreated entirely to allow its members to cultivate their own gardens.
Like all reform movements, the New Left cannot be brought back to life (except perhaps by the historian's craft). This movement is now history, but the quest to reform American life will go on. The problems they wrestled with are still with us.
August 2, 2020
Part meticulously detailed study of the New Left around the University of Texas campus in Austin, part argument about the impact of "Prairie Power" on the evolution of Students for a Democratic Society. The Austin part is excellent, diving deeply into the personal stories of numerous Austin activists in ways that illuminate the role of Christian existentialism in the Texas left, and the intensity of right wing resistance even in Texas's most progressive city. His argument that "authenticity" is the core value of the left is intriguing but not fully convincing. But when Rossinow tackles the larger issues--the relationship between New Left and Counterculture--he's on shaky ground. He overemphasizes the political cohort's distance from the counterculture, especially if you apply his conclusions drawn from Texas to the New Left as a whole. Four stars through about page 200, 2.5 after that.
July 28, 2008
This is a fascinating book about the philosophical origins of the '60's new left. It is also a disquieting reminder of how different things were then, in terms of people's refusal to tolerate oppression, racism, etc. As a society, we were not so complacent then.
September 20, 2010
As a history, this book is entertaining and well-done. Anyone who knows Austin and has any sort of interest in history and politics might actually enjoy reading it. It made me enjoy and appreciate UT a bit more.
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June 13, 2010I loved this book, and yet I have never met another person who read it. Well researched history of the Religious Left.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews