Thoreau's Democratic Withdrawal : Alienation, Participation, and Modernity.

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface: Reclaiming Spaces of Withdrawal for Democratic Politics -- Introduction: Reading Thoreau with Adorno -- Part 1 - Two Interlocutors for Thoreau: Adorno and Emerson -- 1 Damaged Life, the Microscopic Gaze, and Adorno's Practice of Negative Dialectics -- 2 Alienated Existence, Focal Distancing, and Emerson's Transcendental Idealism -- Part 2 - Thoreau's Democratic Withdrawal -- 3 Man as Machine: Thoreau and Modern Alienation -- 4 Huckleberrying toward Democracy: Thoreau's Practices of Withdrawal -- 5 Traveling Away from Home: Thoreau's Spaces of Withdrawal -- Conclusion: Alienation and the Anti-Foundationalist Foundation of the Self -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Best known for his two-year sojourn at Walden Pond in Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau is often considered a recluse who emerged from solitude only occasionally to take a stand on the issues of his day. In Thoreau's Democratic Withdrawal, Shannon L. Mariotti explores Thoreau's nature writings to offer a new way of understanding the unique politics of the so-called hermit of Walden Pond. Drawing imaginatively from the twentieth-century German social theorist Theodor W. Adorno, she shows how withdrawal from the public sphere can paradoxically be a valuable part of democratic politics.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.