The Shadows of the Past and the Work of the Future: Frederick Douglass's Temporal Theory of Democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Nathan Pippenger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
The Past ◽  
Temporal Continuity ◽  
The Future ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Specific Orientation

Abstract Throughout his career, Frederick Douglass linked the achievement of an egalitarian, multiracial democracy to Americans’ perception of their collective past and future. In so doing, I argue, Douglass developed a distinctive, temporal account of democratic peoplehood. For Douglass, temporal continuity lent force and content to demands for equality—demands which would succeed only if the whole demos cultivated a specific orientation to its collective past, present, and future. Douglass offers a productive contrast to contemporary democratic theory, which often misses the importance of temporality suggested by his account and thereby risks surrendering its powerful egalitarian resources. Moreover, temporality provides a new lens on what many interpreters see as an episode of inconsistency in Douglass's thought: his brief, quickly abandoned contemplation of colonization proposals in the spring of 1861. Ultimately, Douglass turned to temporality in order to decide whether democracy for African Americans required affiliation with, or disaffiliation from, the United States.

scholarly journals The great Chinese transformation: cynicism and the future of the world (article two)

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
Grzegorz W. Kolodko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Chinese Characteristics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Right ◽  
Supranational Level

The huge leap made by the Chinese economy over the past four decades as a result of market reforms and openness to the world is causing fear in some and anxiety in others. Questions arise as to whether China’s economic success is solid and whether economic growth will be followed by political expansion. China makes extensive use of globalization and is therefore interested in continuing it. At the same time, China wants to give it new features and specific Chinese characteristics. This is met with reluctance by the current global hegemon, the United States, all the more so as there are fears that China may promote its original political and economic system, "cynicism", abroad. However, the world is still big enough to accommodate us all. Potentially, not necessarily. For this to happen, we need the right policies, which in the future must also include better coordination at the supranational level.

Fragments of the Past, Tasks for the Future: Spanish in the United States

PMLA ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 115 (7) ◽  
pp. 1961-1964
Author(s):  
James D. Fernández
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Place Of Residence ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

In december 1826, a young bostonian on a grand tour of Europe received a letter from his father, offering the following advice: “Such are the relations now existing between this country and Spanish America that a knowledge of the Spanish is quite as important as French. If you neglect either of these languages, you may be sure of not obtaining the station which you have in view.” The son received the letter in Paris, heeded his father's advice, and headed straight for Madrid. Some four months later he would write back from the capital of Spain, “I have not seen a city in Europe which has pleased my fancy so much, as a place of residence” (Helman 340).

The Future of the American Party System

1982 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-50
Author(s):  
C. Edwin Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
American Party ◽  
Personal Assessment ◽  
Future Status

A central theme of contemporary literature on American political parties—a theme with a broad consensus that is uncommon in the discipline—is that the party system of the United States is in transition due to significant changes within the past two decades that distinguish the operation of today's party system from what it was before 1960. However, consensus is lacking as to the implications of these changes for the future status of the American party system. This paper has four broad objectives: 1. to review briefly the phenomenon of party re-alignment in American history as a useful perspective on the present party era; 2. to identify and discuss significant alterations in the party system since 1960 ; 3. to note various scenarios in the literature concerning the future of the parly system in ‘the United States and 4. to hazard a personal assessment of the scenarios as to their plausibility and probability.

The future unlike the past: nuclear proliferation and American security policy

1981 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nacht
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Future ◽  
Nuclear Arms Control

An examination of the past relationships between nuclear proliferation and American security policy substantiates several propositions. First, the political relationship between the United States and each new nuclear weapon state was not fundamentally transformed as a result of nuclear proliferation. Second, with the exception of the Soviet Union, no new nuclear state significantly affected U.S. defense programs or policies. Third, American interest in bilateral nuclear arms control negotiations has been confined to the Soviet Union. Fourth, a conventional conflict involving a nonnuclear ally prompted the United States to intervene in ways it otherwise might not have in order to forestall the use of nuclear weapons.In all respects, however, the relationship between nuclear proliferation and American security policy is changing. The intensification of the superpower rivalry and specific developments in their nuclear weapons and doctrines, the decline of American power more generally, and the characteristics of nuclear threshold states all serve to stimulate nuclear proliferation. It will be increasingly difficult in the future for American security policy to be as insulated from this process as it has been in the past.

On Native Ground: Transnationalism, Frederick Douglass, and “The Heroic Slave”

PMLA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 121 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivy G. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Black Diaspora ◽  
The Bahamas ◽  
Political Citizenship ◽  
National Affiliation ◽  
Cultural Belonging ◽  
Affective System

Beginning with a reconsideration of the symbolic ending of “The Heroic Slave,” where Madison Washington and his compatriots find themselves in the Bahamas and not the United States, this article works through Frederick Douglass's understanding of national affiliation. Taking two specific problems in his imagination–the rhetoric of democracy and transnationalism–I reassess the concept of national affiliation for African Americans when political citizenship is denied. Through its protagonist, Washington, who is thoroughly versed in the vocabulary of United States nationalism, “The Heroic Slave” discloses the incongruence between the rhetoric of nationalism and its materialization as a failure of democratic enactment. The text also intimates Douglass's increasing recognition of transnationalism as an affective system of imagined belonging based on either a shared belief (in democracy) or racial contingency. By deterritorializing cultural belonging, “The Heroic Slave” depicts the liminal position of African Americans, suspended between the nation-state and the black diaspora. (IGW)

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