Introduction by Louis Menand (New York: New York Review Books, [1950] 2008), P
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N o t e s I n t r o d u c t i o n 1 . See David Easton, The Political System (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), Chap. 5. 2 . L i o n e l T r i l l i n g , The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society , introduction by Louis Menand (New York: New York Review Books, [1950] 2008), p. xvii. 3 . I b i d . 4 . I b i d . 5 . I b i d . , e m p h a s i s a d d e d . 6 . I b i d . , p . x x i . 7 . Ibid., pp. xxi, xx. 8 . Lionel Trilling, “The Leavis-Snow Controversy,” in Trilling, The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent , ed. Leon Wieseltier (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2009), p. 419. 9 . T r i l l i n g , Liberal Imagination , p. xix. 10 . Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, [1947] 2002), p. xiv. The term “Critical Theory” referred originally to the work of the Institute for Social Research, established in Frankfurt, Germany, in the late 1920s. 11 . See Max Horkheimer, “Art and Mass Culture,” in Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays , trans. Matthew O’Connell et al. (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), pp. 273–90; Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment , pp. 94–136; Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture , ed. J. M. Bernstein (London and New York: Routledge, 1991); Douglas Kellner, “Film, Politics, and Ideology: Reflections on Hollywood Film in the Age of Reagan,” The Velvet Light Trap , no. 27 (Spring 1991): 9–24. 12 . Chris Benson, “Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice Wins for 12 Years a Slave Suggest New Freedom for Authentic Black Storytelling,” The Huffington Post , The Blog, January 22, 2014, at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris- benson/12-years-a-slave-awards_b_4624468.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainm ent&ir=Entertainment (accessed January 23, 2014). 192 Notes 13. Theodor W. Adorno, “How to Look at Television,” in The Culture Industry , pp. 178–86; Kellner, “Film, Politics, and Ideology”; Douglas Kellner, “The Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies: The Missed Articulation,” in Rethinking the Frankfurt School: Alternative Legacies of Cultural Critique , ed. Jeffrey T. Nealon and Caren Irr (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002), pp. 31–58. 14 . On movies, see Sven L ü tticken, “Planet of the Remakes,” New Left Review , second series, no. 25 (January–February 2004), pp. 103–19. 15 . Claus Offe, Reflections on America: Tocqueville, Weber and Adorno in the United States (Cambridge: Polity, 2005). Horkheimer and Adorno overstate their case when they say, “The more strongly the culture industry entrenches itself, the more it can do as it chooses with the needs of consumers—pro- ducing, controlling, disciplining them; even withdrawing amusement alto- gether” ( Dialectic of Enlightenment , p. 115). Yet even if the culture industry does not control the needs of its consumers, it shapes the freedom we expe- rience in how our “lives are split between business and private life” (ibid., p. 125). 16 . Adorno later acknowledged that “vestiges of the aesthetic claim to some- thing autonomous . remain even within the most trivial product of mass culture.” See Adorno, “How to Look at Television,” p. 159. 17 . Michael Wood, Film: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 84. Relatedly, Heather Hendershot notes the recent emer- gence of “terrific ‘not TV’ shows” on HBO and elsewhere in the “post- network” television era. See Heather Hendershot, “Losers Take All: On the New American Cinema,” The Nation , May 30, 2011, at: http://www.then- ation.com/article/160606/losers-take-all-new-american-cinema (accessed September 14, 2014). 18 . See Kellner, “Film, Politics, and Ideology.” For example, different segments of the audience for All in the Family , the 1970s the CBS sitcom, understood the show’s bigoted main character, Archie Bunker, in conflicting ways. See Emily Nussbaum, “The Great Divide: Norman Lear, Archie Bunker, and the rise of the bad fan,” The New Yorker , April 7, 2014, pp. 64–68. 1 9 . S e v e r a l r e c e n t H o l l y w o o d m o v i e s — f o r e x a m p l e , In Time (2011), The Hunger Games (2012), Elysium (2013), and Snowpiercer (2014)—have addressed issues of economic inequality and environmental degradation in provocative ways; recent movies have addressed legacies of racism with varying insight; and several current television shows—such as “Girls” and “Orange Is the New Black”—explore gender and sexuality in challenging ways. On the latter, see A. O. Scott, “The Post-Man,” The New York Times Magazine , September 14, 2014, pp. 38–41, 60. 20 . Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music , 5th edition (New York: Plume/Penguin, [1975] 2008), p. 13. 21 . See Mark Shechner, “The Elusive Trilling (Part I),” The Nation , September 17, 1977, pp. 247–49; Ilan Stavans, “In the American Grain,” The Nation , September 7, 2000, at: http://www.thenation.com/article/american-grain (accessed February 3, 2013); Louis Menand, “Introduction,” in Trilling, Notes 193 Liberal Imagination , pp. vii–xiv; Adam Kirsch, Why Trilling Matters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011); Edward Mendelson, “The Demonic Trilling,” The New York Review of Books , June 7, 2012, at: http:// www.nybooks.com/account/signin/?next=/articles/archives/2012/jun/07/ demonic-lionel-trilling/ (accessed February 3, 2013). 22. There have been exceptions. See Seyla Benhabib, “The Liberal Imagination and the Four Dogmas of Multiculturalism,” The Yale Journal of Criticism 12, no. 2 (1999): 401–13. See also John Frow, “Cultural Studies and the Neoliberal Imagination,” The Yale Journal of Criticism 12, no. 2 (1999): 424–30; Michael Warner, “Liberalism and the Cultural Studies Imagination: A Comment on John Frow,” The Yale Journal of Criticism 12, no. 2 (1999): 431–33. 2 3 . S e e J o h n R a w l s , A Theory of Justice , revised edition (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999); Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013). 24 . Frow, “Cultural Studies and the Neoliberal Imagination,” p. 424. 2 5 . K i r s c h , Why Trilling Matters , ch. 3. 2 6 . T r i l l i n g , Liberal Imagination, p. xix. See also Benhabib, “Liberal Imagination,” pp. 401–2. 2 7 . T r i l l i n g , Liberal Imagination , p. xix. 28 . Ibid., pp. xix–xx. 2 9 . I b i d . , p . x x . 30 . Ibid., pp. xx–xxi. 31 . These shortcomings of Trilling’s effort to examine liberalism in a “critical spirit” are partly due to the fact that as a literary critic he was little inter- ested in analyzing competing understandings of “freedom,” “equality,” and “democracy.” As Robert Scholes says, Trilling’s book offers little help for “achieving a critical perspective on liberalism’s primal imagination.” See Robert Scholes, “The Illiberal Imagination,” New Literary History 4, no. 3 (Spring, 1973): 521–40, 522. 32 . Frow, “Cultural Studies and the Neoliberal Imagination,” pp. 425–26. Kirsch notes that Trilling’s ideas sometimes seem to align with neocon- servative critiques of the welfare state ( Why Trilling Matters , p. 42); yet we can also find Trilling criticizing “the failures and injustices of capitalism” and inequalities of education opportunity. See Trilling, “William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste” (1951), in Moral Obligation , p. 214; and Trilling, “Mind in the Modern World” (1972), in Moral Obligation , p. 491. 33 . Ronald Reagan, “Inaugural Address” (1981), at: http://www.heritage.org/ initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/reagans-first-inaugural-gov- ernment-is-not-the-solution-to-our-problem-government-is-the-problem (accessed October 22, 2014). 3 4 . T r i l l i n g , Liberal Imagination , pp. xxi, xix; Benhabib, “Liberal Imagination,” pp. 406–11. 3 5 . K i r s c h , Why Trilling Matters , pp. 39–40, 62. 3 6 . T r i l l i n g , Liberal Imagination , p. xxi. 194 Notes 37 . Benhabib, “Liberal Imagination”; Charles Mills, “Occupy Liberalism! Or, Ten Reasons Why Liberalism Cannot Be Retrieved for Radicalism (And Why They’re All Wrong),” Radical Philosophy Review 15, no. 2 (2012): 305–23. 38 . Irving Howe, “Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling,” The Nation , no. 170 (May 27, 1950): 529. 39 . Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment . 40. Scholes, “The Illiberal Imagination,” p. 535. Scholes also notes the responsi- bility of Cold War liberals for the United States’ disastrous Vietnam War. 4 1 . I b i d . , p . 5 3 4 . 42 . Robert Kuttner, “Why Work Is More and More Debased,” The New York Review of Books 61, October 23, 2014, pp. 52–53; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 4 3 . J o h n D e w e y , Liberalism and Social Action (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, [1935] 2000), p. 30. 4 4 . I b i d . , p . 3 5 . 4 5 . I b i d . 46. Charles Mills, “Occupy Liberalism! Or, Ten Reasons Why Liberalism Cannot Be Retrieved fro Radicalism (And Why They’re All Wrong),” Radical Philosophy Review 15, no. 2 (2012): 305–23. 47 . Richard Schmitt, “Response to Charles Mills’s: ‘Occupy Liberalism!,’” Radical Philosophy Review 15, no. 2 (2012): 331–36, at p. 334. The influen- tial liberalism of John Locke, advanced in his Two Treatises of Government (1689), had just such an exclusionary character. For critiques of Lockean and other exclusionary forms of liberalism, see John Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action (1935); Carole Pateman and Charles W.