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Journal: Review of International American Studies

"Believe and tremble": A Note on Margaret Fuller's Roman Revolution

John Matteson

Language: EN | Published: 30-11-2017 | Abstract

John Matteson
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
City University of New York
USA

“Believe and tremble”: A Note on Margaret Fuller’s Roman Revolution

Abstract: 1848, Europe’s year of revolutions, was also a revolutionary moment in the United States, for it witnessed the holding of the Seneca Falls Convention, the first formal gathering for the purpose of discussing the social and civil rights of women in America. A significant step on the road to Seneca Falls had taken place three years earlier when Margaret Fuller, the former editor of Emerson’s literary magazine The Dial, published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, an erudite and impassioned plea for female equality that had no precedent in American letters. Yet when the pioneering band of feminists gathered to ratify its Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls, Fuller was thousands of miles away. The revolutionary movement to which she devoted her heart and toil that year was not the cause of American feminism, but the democratic revolution in Rome.

2017-11-30



Journal: Review of International American Studies

“Men First, Subjects Afterward”

Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience,” and the Thoreauvian Echoes of 1968 and After

Albena Kouzmanova Bakratcheva

Language: EN | Published: 23-12-2019 | Abstract | pp. 119-128

Thoreau's political reputation in the United States dates from the 1960s when the Americans began to see themselves in a political context. The single most famous fact of Thoreau's life had once been perceived as his going off to Walden Pond in order to drive life into a corner; in the sixties that was superseded by Thoreau's night spent in jail in order to drive the government into a corner. This paper will deal with Thoreau’s impact in both the US and Europe in 1968, as well as two decades later when ‘Civil Disobedience’ became the slogan of the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe.

2019-12-23



Journal: Review of International American Studies

American and European Leftist Academia through the Prism of Paul Berman’s A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968

Alexander L. Gungov

Language: EN | Published: 23-12-2019 | Abstract | pp. 89-102

In his book, Paul Berman outlines a productive framework for a further interpretation of ideas of the leftist thinkers in North America and Europe. This article tries to follow Berman’s approach and to provide a critical stance towards the views of a number of Western social and political philosophers who write after 1968 and even after 1989. My findings confirm Berman’s light irony to this trend of thought but emphasize that some of the works discussed seem to be realistic in avoiding unjustified optimism concerning the leftist position.

2019-12-23



Journal: Review of International American Studies

Counter-Revolution, or Authentic Socialism?

The Reactions of the US Left to the Events in Czechoslovakia in 1968

Jan Géryk

Language: EN | Published: 23-12-2019 | Abstract | pp. 27-48

For the majority of Leftists in the 1960s, the Soviet Union ceased to be intellectually and ideologically inspiring. Both Soviet Communism and Western capitalism at that time represented “the System” which offered universal manipulability and universal marketability as its only alternative modes. Thus, the Left searched for authentic socialism, whether in the Marxist-humanist philosophy, in the Third World revolutions, or in the local socialist traditions. However, even though the global Left faced several general problems common to all Cold War worlds, there were also important contextual differences which prevented the common base from further development.
     Following this general context, this article will focus on the Left in Czechoslovakia and in the USA, particularly on the question whether the Czechoslovak reform movement of the late 1960s was inspiring for various groups on the US Left. With regard to the U.S. left-wing reactions to the Prague Spring or to the resistance of Czechoslovak people against the Warsaw Pact invasion, the article will pay attention especially to the discursive dichotomy of authentic socialism vs. counter-revolution.

2019-12-23