MAN WITH A GHOST: RANDOLPH BOURNE’S RADICAL CULTURAL IDEALISM Kevin T. Higashikubo A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2021 Committee: Jolie Sheffer, Advisor Andrew Schocket © 2021 Kevin Higashikubo All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Jolie Sheffer, Advisor Though not obscure as a figure in American intellectual history, Randolph Bourne has largely been overlooked by American culture studies. My main argument is that Bourne’s cultural writings show a distinctly American approach to the complications of modernity that show the early 20th century as worthwhile grounds for more contemporary consideration within cultural studies. I explore the foundations of Randolph Bourne's cultural idealism, beginning with an analysis of philosophical pragmatism. Bourne radical understanding of pragmatism was a framework to reimagine two important cultural concepts: youth and national identity. I proceed to examine the role of irony in Randolph Bourne's cultural idealism. I show how Bourne drew from the history of irony to create a cultural concept that served two purposes. First, it was a companion to philosophical pragmatism that would help resolve some of the philosophy's shortcomings in dealing with social values. Second, it was a means to a creative, social empathy needed to fulfill the promises of American democracy in an increasingly complicated world. Finally, I examine Bourne’s cultural idealism through his social aesthetics, which was his way for the individual to, through cultivation of personal taste, regain agency and subjectivity in modernity. This is largely framed through Bourne’s essays arguing against the hierarchical and undemocratic cultural idealism of English poet and critic, Matthew Arnold. Finally, I look at Bourne’s idealism as expressed through the function and power of taste. This project, by looking closely at Bourne’s radical cultural idealism, posits that he had a considered theory of culture meant to answer social problems posed by modernity to early twentieth-century American life. iv For my parents, Carlene and Ryuji, without whom none of this would have been possible. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I need to thank my advisor, Jolie Sheffer, not only for her advice but for her patience during this long process. Next would be Andrew Schocket, who had to endure much of the same. This project would not have been possible without their input and guidance. Beka Patterson deserves mention for her incredible ability to keep things organized in ways I never could have. I would also like to thank all of my friends, classmates, and colleagues at Bowling Green State University, who made that time and place not only an experience of deep and rewarding academic study, but also a community that I will forever miss. Finally, I need to give special thanks to two individuals: the first is my brother, Bryan, who put up with countless hours of conversations and digressions these past few years, but did so without complaint and was my regular sounding board. The second is Prof. Krister Knapp, who so many years ago introduced me to Randolph Bourne and thus set me down this path. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION: IN-BUT-NOT-OF-THE-WORLD ............................................................ 1 Methodology ................................................................................................................. 10 Structure ........................................................................................................................ 13 CHAPTER ONE: THE FOUNDATIONS OF RANDOLPH BOURNE’S IDEALISM .......... 18 A Brief History of Pragmatism ..................................................................................... 23 Pragmatism’s Radical Potential .................................................................................... 27 Youth: How to Live Creatively ..................................................................................... 35 Trans-Nationalism ......................................................................................................... 47 Trans-Nationalism and Cultural Idealism ..................................................................... 51 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 59 CHAPTER TWO: IRONY ....................................................................................................... 64 The Origins of Bourne’s Irony ...................................................................................... 68 Three Moments in the Life of Irony ............................................................................. 77 1. The Life Ironic, with Randolph Bourne ........................................................ 78 2. Irony and Pragmatism .................................................................................. 83 3. Irony and Democracy as Social Philosophy ................................................. 89 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 95 CHAPTER THREE: THE AESTHETICS OF TASTE ............................................................ 100 The Philosophy of Taste in Kant and Nietzsche ........................................................... 106 Culture Versus Anarchy ................................................................................................ 117 Arnold and Cultural Stability ........................................................................................ 120 vii The Canon ............................................................................................................... 125 The Cult of the Best ...................................................................................................... 128 Life as an Aesthetic Challenge ..................................................................................... 135 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 139 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 143 History as an Echo ........................................................................................................ 143 A Death, Premature ....................................................................................................... 144 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................... 151 1 INTRODUCTION: IN-BUT-NOT-OF-THE-WORLD “What are the seeds of American promise?” Randolph Bourne asked in 1917.1 In that moment, he was writing the question as part of a larger condemnation of the American intelligentsia that had so quickly acquiesced to America’s entry into World War I. Bourne saw this eager acceptance of a war mentality as a total betrayal of all the liberal and progressive ideals that the American intelligentsia had so fervently claimed to hold dear in the years leading up to that horrific conflict. And so, by asking that question in 1917, he was, in effect, accusing the American intelligentsia of, in their desire for international power or influence, salting the soil where the seeds of promise had previously been sown. This Master’s thesis is about Randolph Bourne’s radical cultural idealism. Most of the work he did on this was written about in the decade before the World War I. And yet, that single sentence – “what are the seeds of American promise?” – though written later on, was really the central question on his mind throughout his entire career. Randolph Bourne was a man possessed by thoughts of the fate and future of American culture. Every topic he turned his mind to, whether it was the nascent youth culture of his generation, the dominant philosophies of his time, the theory behind education, musing on art or literature, or finally the venom he spat at American militarization – all of it ultimately centered around that single question: what are the seeds of American promise? And from that question, Bourne wondered, how could we, as a nation, best those seeds the chance to bloom and flourish? As America entered World War I, Bourne’s cultural idealism faded; it turned into cynicism and despair. But before that, his idealism was a verdant critical landscape full of democratic possibilities and the means for people to navigate 1 Randolph Bourne, “Twilight of the Idols,” in War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays 1915- 1919, ed. Carl Resek (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1999), 53. 2 the social fractures of modernity. This thesis is an account of that landscape, of Bourne’s cultural idealism. Bourne’s cultural writings, which were written between 1911 and 1916, have never been as popular than the ones that came later. And even when his cultural writings are the subject of scholarship, they often are dealt with in isolation with each other: an analysis of Bourne’s concept of irony here, a reframing of his “trans-nationalism” there. My project with this thesis is to take these pre-war, cultural essays and put their ideas in conversation with one another. From this approach, I argue, we can see that Bourne had a clear vision behind his cultural idealism – a project to strengthen democratic thinking, promote social empathy, and empower people to cultural creativity and new expressions of human agency