Rezensionen 116 clichéd manifestations of today’s pulp fictions; she writes about Josephine Baker, the movies The Birth of a Nation and Falling Down, and mural arts. Part III of Race-ing the Century continues the investigation of popular culture focusing in particular on the ethics of impersonation (Elvis vs. El Vez), “the debasement of original iconicity” (14); Banerjee posits that impersonation may alienate normative strategies from themselves thus turning such representations into positive race-ing impulses. And in this case the message is carried by another powerful medium of popular culture: music. The author believes that both popular and elite culture can change the way one thinks - indeed a very humanist and affirmative assumption - and, therefore, they should embody the multiple (meaning multi-racial and multi-cultural) representations of which reality is composed. There probably is no better illustration of this point than the figure of the Mexican Elvis. Race-ing the Century by Mita Banerjee is a thorough and excellently written study of ethnic cultural representations which introduces an unusually wide perspective on the problems of dialogues and clashes between cultures, ways of resisting and deconstructing dominant discourse, and the democratization of various representations promoted and sustained by popular culture. Some readers may find the lack of typical chronology, and author’s refusal to look separately at Chicano, Native American, African American, Asian American, and mainstream productions slightly unusual, an aspect Banerjee herself acknowledges as problematic. Probably the book could also benefit from a discussion on contemporary African American (? ) hip hop music, a field where the politics of power, race, and de-constructing are very visible. Yet, the author might decide to explore it in another study, equally voluminous and illustrative as Race-ing the Century. Andrzej Antoszek English Department / American Studies Catholic University of Lublin Robert B. Westbrook, Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2005. Ulf Schulenberg During the reign of analytic philosophy or logical positivism from the late 1940s to the 1970s, pragmatism seemed to be erased from the American intellectual map. Since the early 1980s, however, pragmatism’s fate has changed decidedly. It can be said that Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) and Consequences of Pragmatism (1982) initiated that change. The much-discussed revival of pragmatism has led to debates and sometimes bitter controversies whose effects can be detected across disciplinary lines (as the volume edited by Morris Dickstein, The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture [1998], AAA Band 32 (2007), Heft 1 Rezensionen 117 amply testifies). Concerning the renaissance of pragmatism, American intellectual history has played a crucial role. Authors such as James Kloppenberg, David Hollinger, Casey Nelson Blake, James Livingston, and John Pettegrew have underscored the complexity and usefulness, as well as the inadequacies and insufficiencies, of American pragmatism. Often critical of the various versions of neopragmatism, they have sought to call attention to the contemporary significance of classical pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Since the publication of his John Dewey and American Democracy (1991), Robert Westbrook, an intellectual historian who teaches at the University of Rochester, has developed his own brand of Deweyan pragmatism in numerous essays. His arguments in the conversation between philosophers and intellectual historians have mostly been stimulating and provocative. In Democratic Hope, Westbrook addresses a question which for various reasons has not yet reached center stage in the current revival of pragmatism. He discusses the political implications of various versions of pragmatism, and he seeks to elucidate those versions’ contributions to American democratic thought. To put this somewhat differently, Westbrook wants to show why pragmatism is the perfect epistemology for those who are committed to a democratic faith. He is of course not the first author interested in the political implications of pragmatism. In the 1980s, for instance, Cornel West developed his leftist version of neopragmatism which culminated in The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (1989). Yet while West presented himself as a democratic socialist in the 1980s, Westbrook rather sees himself as a Deweyan democrat calling for a participatory democratic culture and underlining the importance of the discourse ethics of democracy. Westbrook formulates his main interest as follows: “My principal concern in this book is with the political views of American pragmatists, which inevitably raises the question of what, if anything, about these views can be attributed to their pragmatism” (8). The book is divided into two parts. Part One (“Pragmatism Old”) consists of five chapters: “Peircean Politics”, “Our Kinsman, William James”, “Pullman and the Professor”, “On the Private Parts of a Public Philosopher,” and “Marrying Marxism.” This part discusses the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Part Two examines “Pragmatism New” and consists of four chapters: “A Dream Country”, “Democratic Logic”, “Democratic Evasions,” and “Educating Citizens.” This second part deals with the thought of contemporary neopragmatists and their critics (Rorty, West, Hilary Putnam, Cheryl Misak, and Richard Posner). Westbrook’s Introduction (1-17) summarizes the main characteristics of a pragmatist position: its antifoundationalism, antirepresentationalism, fallibilism, historicism, naturalism, as well as its gesture of simply setting conventional problems of modern philosophy aside. Westbrook is right in maintaining that pragmatism is not only valuable because of its severe critique of the idea of a correspondence theory of truth and of the quest for certainty, and its decidedly antimetaphysical gesture in general, but also because it urges one to grasp the complexity of a position which combines fallibilism and antiskepticism (Hilary Putnam and Richard J. Bernstein have repeatedly called attention to the crucial nature of this combination). Of utmost importance for Westbrook’s argument is the idea that pragmatism, because of its methodological commitment to experimental inquiry, “has a powerful elective affinity with democracy” (8). In other words, “at their best the methods of Rezensionen 118 democracy and pragmatic inquiry intersect. Pragmatic inquiry shares a ‘discourse ethics’ with democracy. Pragmatists who embrace Dewey’s conviction that politics should be a mode of ‘organized intelligence’ believe that the intelligence of political communities, like that of all effective communities of inquiry, should be organized democratically” (8-9). The application of scientific intelligence to social concerns, if one follows Westbrook, allows one to realize the importance of method as democratic, pragmatic inquiry and deliberation. While Rorty has called for a “pragmatism without method” (in his essay on Sidney Hook and other pieces), Westbrook emphasizes that since “it is pragmatism’s method that ties it to democracy - its argument that the best route to warranted belief is cooperative inquiry such as that practiced by scientists - a pragmatism without method would indeed be bereft of political implications” (10). The first part of Westbrook’s text tackles many interesting issues. In his essay on Peirce’s conservative pragmatism, Westbrook explains why this classical pragmatist is important for his understanding of a deliberative, participatory democracy. Peirce’s logical communitarianism and his “thin, methodological injunction not to block the road of inquiry and the pursuit of truth” (50) deserve special mention in this context. At the same time, however, Westbrook’s contention is that the Peircean heritage is problematic insofar as “he severed the connection between inquiry and politics that other pragmatists would forge into an epistemic argument for democracy” (30). To put it differently, Peirce was not inclined to turn his attention to the problems of men in a Deweyan sense and he argued that philosophers should stick to the problems of their trade. William James, in contrast, as Westbrook makes clear in the next chapter, more and more has come to be regarded as a public philosopher or as someone who contributed to the fields of social and political theory. Westbrook discusses texts by George Cotkin, James Livingston, and Frank Lentricchia. These three authors have attempted to draw attention to the political side of James’s texts, that is, his work as a political activist, his anti-imperialism, and his desire for cultural pluralism. Westbrook agrees with Cotkin, whose William James, Public Philosopher (1990) is probably one of the best studies of what might be termed James’s worldly pragmatism, that James’s social and political philosophy shows many weaknesses. Nonetheless, Westbrook advances the argument that while “Dewey’s democratic theory is the richest resource in pragmatist political and social thought on which we might profitably draw,” James “adds something to a pragmatist politics all too often missing in Dewey’s formulation of it” (73). In “Pullman and the Professor,” Westbrook offers a comparison between Dewey and Eugene Debs which focuses on what historians have called “producerism” or “producer-republicanism” (which “emerged in late-eighteenth-century America as an agrarian and artisanal variant of the civic republicanism that played such an important role in the ideology of the American Revolution” [83]). Westbrook is particularly interested in the impact of producerism on Dewey’s philosophy of education. This chapter contains an illuminating discussion of the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago, the Dewey School, and its significance as an experiment in education for industrial democracy. Another point worth mentioning is that Westbrook uses this chapter to remind his readers of Dewey’s concern with the labor question and his support of the working class. The first part of Democratic Hope closes with a discussion of the relation between pragmatism and Marxism. In this chapter, Westbrook Rezensionen 119 examines various aspects of this highly problematic relationship. Discussing Brian Lloyd’s Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890-1922 (1997), Christopher Phelps’s Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist (1997), and essays by James Livingston, Westbrook stresses the incompatibility between the democratic discourse ethics of a pragmatist politics, central to his study, and the foundationalist nature of most versions of socialism. It is obvious that as a Deweyan (radical) democrat Westbrook has serious problems with attempts to argue for the necessity of developing an American brand of radical socialism. The goals of a “pragmatic socialism,” if we follow Westbrook, will be less revolutionary than those of a radical socialism: “dignified, well-renumerated labor, equal opportunity, and democratic citizenship” (128). Of utmost importance to Dewey’s socialism was the idea that individuality, autonomy, and self-government ought not to be eclipsed. The central essay of the second part of Westbrook’s study is undoubtedly the one on Rorty. Westbrook discusses the following aspects of Rorty’s thought: his work as a connected critic in Michael Walzer’s sense, his antiauthoritarianism (as antifoundationalism), his ethnocentrism, his understanding of America’s future and mission, his New Deal liberalism as the liberalism of a social democrat, and his reading of the American Left. Westbrook’s analysis of Rorty’s texts is suggestive since he focuses on the manner in which the latter seeks to connect his antifoundationalism or antiauthoritarian pragmatism to this patriotism or Americanism. While there have been numerous attempts to explain how Rorty brings his pragmatism, liberalism, and Americanism together, or fails to do so, Westbrook at least partly provides new insights into this problem. Recognizing the importance of “Rorty’s maturation narrative of progress from religious to rationalist to pragmatist outlooks” (160), which ends with his notion of a postmetaphysical literary or poeticized culture that no longer needs the certainty and reliability of what is more than another human invention, Westbrook at the same time critiques his fellow pragmatist’s understanding of method, theory, and liberalism. According to Westbrook, “a left without social theory is disarmed” (171). Concerning social change and the notion of (social-democratic) hope, Westbrook advances the argument that liberalism, “however necessary it is to the social democratic future Rorty imagines, may not be sufficient” (173). In the chapter “Democratic Logic,” Westbrook once again deals with Dewey’s concept of democracy, or rather with his attempt to find a sort of philosophical backup for democracy. In this context, Westbrook expands on a point he already addressed in his Introduction, namely, Hilary Putnam’s argument that he has found an epistemological justification for democracy in Dewey’s texts. Other authors discussed in this chapter include Cheryl Misak and Richard Posner. Chapter 8 (“Democratic Evasions”) concentrates on the work of one of the most fascinating neopragmatists of the 1980s: Cornel West. After having summarized the main ideas of West’s The American Evasion of Philosophy and his understanding of “Geistesgeschichte,” Westbrook elaborates on some of the main differences between West’s leftist prophetic pragmatism and Rorty’s liberal pragmatism. In the context of his discussion of West’s “postmodernist, Christian Marxism” (209), Westbrook critiques three theoretical features of West’s pragmatism. First, Westbrook claims that West never explains why one should still hold on to Marxism. This critique is not justified, though, as West has explained in numerous texts why he holds that certain aspects of Marxism, for instance, the concept of totality and the conceptual instrument of mediation, are still Rezensionen 120 significant for leftist thought. Second, Westbrook states that West should have said more about the manner in which he combines his Christianity and his Marxism. Finally, he wishes that West were more careful or hesitant in his attempts to combine pragmatism and postmodernism. Westbrook nicely describes his own position when he writes: “Pragmatists, to my mind, need to position themselves more centrally than West does between the epistemological, moral, and cultural relativisms of the academic left and the reactionary rationalisms of the intellectual right” (213). In the final chapter of his book, Westbrook reflects on past and present debates over public education, the educational purposes of American democracy, and Deweyan democratic citizenship, and he offers some pragmatic suggestions as to the direction future solutions to the current dilemma might take. Analyzing the political implications of various versions of (neo)pragmatism, Westbrook’s Democratic Hope is a highly illuminating and timely study that calls attention to hitherto neglected aspects of the revival of pragmatism. Moreover, while following Westbrook’s discussion of pragmatist politics, his own version of, or rather hope for, a Deweyan participatory democratic culture becomes increasingly convincing and attractive. However, the reader should not expect a systematic approach to the question of pragmatism and politics. The book somewhat suffers from the fact that it often appears as a collection of essays rather than as a tightly organized and structured monograph. As Westbrook admits, some of the essays “are occasional pieces prompted by this particular moment in American intellectual history, and all of them are reflective of it” (xiv). Nonetheless, the book would have profited, had its author refrained from repeating himself in several of these pieces (and from repeatedly quoting the same passages). What should also be mentioned is that an analysis of the problem of pragmatist politics ought to address the question of pragmatism and race. This question, which has mostly been ignored in other discussions of the renaissance of pragmatism, need not necessarily focus on West’s neopragmatism. As George Hutchinson’s The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White (1995) and Ross Posnock’s Color and Culture: Black Writers and the Making of the Modern Intellectual (1998) have shown, pragmatism had a profound impact on the thinking of W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, and other African-American intellectuals. Unfortunately, Westbrook only mentions this black pragmatist tradition in a footnote without examining it in detail (59). Yet in spite of these shortcomings, Democratic Hope is a book everybody interested in the future of American pragmatism, and American democratic culture, should read. Ulf Schulenberg Anglistik/ Amerikanistik Universität Bremen