George Santayana, Cultural Diversity, and New American Identity. (English)
In: Miguk-sa Yongu, Jg. 27 (2008-04-01), S. 79-113
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Zugriff:
The 1910s was an era that proposed more severe criticisms about American and traditional culture than any other period in American history. Americans had been trying to create indigenous an American culture or criticizing American society since the late nineteenth century. However, the criticisms of the Young Intellectuals in the 1910s were broader and wider. They criticized everything in American society and offered innovations such as pluralistic identities and cultural relativism that could form the basis of a new American culture. The critiques of the 1910s could therefore be considered the basis for the reinvention and reinvigoration of American culture in the 1920s. George Santayana was the most important figure among intellectuals in the criticism of American and traditional culture. He suggested that Americans form a new culture embracing the rapid changes in their society. In this process, he labeled traditional culture as the "Genteel Tradition," to which he assumed a critical attitude. Santayana's critique of American culture focused on Puritanism, Transcendentalism, and traditional art that he considered inadequate to sustain and control American society. His criticisms aimed to present a new American identity as the basis for American culture. With the advent of the 20th century America had become the most diverse nation because of its variety of races, nations, ethnic groups, and religions. Therefore, Santayana believed that a new American culture should reflect this variety and thus unify the society as a whole. Santayana stimulated alternatives for this new American culture based on the ideas of Walt Whitman or William James that focused on American democracy, cultural universality and minority cultural viewpoints. In their portrayals and critiques of American society Young Intellectuals built on Santayana's concept of the "Genteel Tradition" as they defined the role of intellectuals in resolving these problems. Santayana's critique and the movement for a new American culture were halted by the entry of the United States into the First World War in 1917. But after the war, America had become one of the powerful nations in the world, and the essential questions about American culture emerged once again. From the 1920s forward to the present day, the criticisms and proposed alternatives of Santayana would help shape the conception of American multiculturalism to replace the "Genteel Tradition" he first identified in the 1910s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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George Santayana, Cultural Diversity, and New American Identity. (English)
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Kim, Seohyung |
Zeitschrift: | Miguk-sa Yongu, Jg. 27 (2008-04-01), S. 79-113 |
Veröffentlichung: | 2008 |
Medientyp: | academicJournal |
ISSN: | 1229-0238 (print) |
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