The Subversion of Political and Cultural Authority in U.S. Culture

Annotation

The Subversion of Political and Cultural Authority in U.S. Culture

An examination of the historical and contemporary cultural dynamics that have worked effectively to devalorize deference and to subvert both political and cultural authority in the U.S. Readings will include selections from

Emerson, Washington, Whitman, Tocqueville, Thoreau, Melville, William James, Henry James, John Dewey,

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Benjamin Tucker, Emma Goldman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich von Hayek, Michel

Foucault, Richard Poirier, Richard Rorty, Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins, Malcolm X, Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick,

Noam Chomsky, and Herbert Marcuse.