Dialectical Thinkers Research Articles

Dialectical Sentences and Social Contradictions in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables

This paper highlights formal and thematic expressions of discursive conflicts in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. It focuses on Hawthorne’s use of the “dialectical sentence,” a type of sentence attributed to German dialectical thinkers, principally Theodor Adorno. Voicing two contradictory views in the same breath, the dialectical sentence provides formal expression of irresolvable discursive conflicts. Hawthorne’s dialectical sentence serves as a suitable medium for expressing the conflict of interests between the Pyncheon and Maule families. The discursive conflicts are expressed through a set of binary terms, including Pyncheon/Maule, novel/romance, present/past, reason/rumor and science/ superstition. The first term in each binary usually serves for the Pyncheons and the second, the Maules. Thus, expressed in dialectical sentences, the narrative voice oscillates between an irony which reflects the values of the former family and an enthusiasm which reflects those of the latter. Coming down firmly on neither side of the conflict, and through avoiding reconciliation, the novel takes on a dialectical structure which keeps the resolution of the discursive conflicts, as a utopian element, for a time outside the novel’s timeframe.

Bernard Shaw + Richard Rorty = Two Dialectical Peas in a Jesusian Pragmatist Pod

ABSTRACT This article argues that Shaw and Rorty are dialectical Jesusian pragmatists who share three significant and interrelated characteristics that could easily play decisive roles in determining the fate of the human species and the planet that sustains it: ethnocentrism, liberal ironism, and Jesusian pragmatism. Ethnocentrism, a synthesis of absolutism and nihilism, asserts that we necessarily make value judgments from parochial vantage points because we live in an inescapably pluralistic world. Liberal ironism, a dialectical synthesis of liberalism and contingency, asserts that humans can commit themselves to privileged causes even in the face of radical uncertainties in theory and practice. Jesusian pragmatism, a synthesis of Christian agape and pragmatist tenets, asserts that Jesusian social values compose the ethical core of a pragmatism dedicated to providing global wellness. The argument shows that Shaw and Rorty are not only congruent dialectical thinkers, but also kindred Jesusian pragmatists.

Dialectical thinking as a driver of charitable giving

AbstractIt is well documented that people are less generous in their charitable contribution when donation recipients are perceived to bear some responsibility for their aversive situation. However, there is limited research that identifies the factors that may influence generosity toward blameworthy recipients. The present research addresses this gap and examines the moderating role of dialectical thinking in the relationship between recipient responsibility and charitable giving. Our studies demonstrate that compared to high dialectical thinkers, low dialectical thinkers are less likely to donate when they perceive recipients to be responsible for their plight. Mediation analysis reveals that this effect is mediated through low dialectical thinkers' weaker belief in recipients' changeability and lower degree of sympathy. This study intends to make theoretical contributions to the literatures of dialectical thinking and charitable giving, and provides implications for organizations with the aim of helping seemingly irresponsible individuals.

Romanticism and Speculative Realism ed. by Anne C. McCarthy and Chris Washington

Reviewed by: Romanticism and Speculative Realism ed. by Anne C. McCarthy and Chris Washington Joshua David Gonsalves (bio) Anne C. McCarthy and Chris Washington, eds. Romanticism and Speculative Realism. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. Pp. 290. $125 hardcover. Romanticism and Speculative Realism reconceptualizes Romanticism via recent innovations in philosophy: renovated ontologies, new materialisms, speculations on relations between (non)humans, ecology, and social infrastructures. The results take the form of practical criticism, as the collection subjects Romanticist preconceptions of imagination, nature, and language to advances in theoretical thinking. It is one more welcome attempt to keep literary criticism on the cutting edge of things. Essays in the collection cover a wide range of subjects, including readings of familiar canonical Romantic writers, such as Blake (Allison Dushane), Byron (Aaron Ottinger), Keats (Greg Ellermann), Scott (Evan Gottlieb), and Wordsworth (Joel Faflak); some concern less usual suspects, such as John Clare (David Collings), Rousseau (Chris Washington), Poe (Graham Harman), and Equiano (Alexander Dick); other chapters take on some broader categories of Romantic-period writing such as Nature (Mary Jacobus), The Spirit of the Age (Michele Speitz), Feminisms (Kate Singer), and Cookery Books (Brian Rejack). As the introduction announces, the volume attempts to demonstrate “the necessity of romanticism for understanding the world revealed by speculative realism” (1). A bit of context, however, before approaching this encounter between philosophy and literary studies, since there is always a risk that the philosophy becomes diluted as it comes into contact with literary reading practices. This happened with deconstruction, in which Paul de Man’s ruthless close reading found a receptive soil in New Criticism-enriched literature departments in contradistinction to the English-language reductions imposed on a very different Derridean deconstruction. Similar reductions are currently [End Page 240] happening to “Speculative Realism,” as is exemplified by its identification with Object-Oriented-Ontology (OOO) and New Materialism. It will be helpful then to distinguish Speculative Realism (associated with Meillassoux, Brassier, and, to a lesser extent, Iain Hamilton Grant), OOO (associated with Graham Harman)—which believes it can access Kant’s things-in-themselves via “allusion,” or a figurative language replete with anecdotal objects (220)—, and the misnamed New Materialism, which insists, alongside Latour, on the non-human agency of objects. One succinct way of addressing these distinctions would be to suggest that what OOO and New Materialism leave out, unlike the speculative realism of Meillassoux and Brassier, is historical materialism. Similarly, the influence of Badiou, a staunch believer in History (with a capital H, as in Hegel, Marx, and other dialectical thinkers who invest in history rather than the object in order to escape Kant), is powerfully felt in Meillassoux and Brassier’s writings, but falls by the wayside in OOO and New Materialism. How, then, can the fate of these theoretical-historical contexts in Romanticism and Speculative Realism help us evaluate the way it deals with these differences? The term “Speculative Realism” offers a clue, since Harman, who contributes an essay to this volume, continues to use it despite Brassier and Meillassoux insisting that he stop associating his project with theirs. Both of these writers, who resist the exploitation of the term, take Badiou seriously (one being his student, the other his translator-explicator), in part because historical materialism is central to their versions of Speculative Realism. Two contributors to this volume, Faflak and Washington, register the contextual importance of historical materialism by engaging our contemporary capitalist horizon (59, 141) even as Faflak brackets a historicism-cum-materialism in favor of what this volume requires—close reading—, a bracketing of philosophy that Harman likewise enacts via his reading of Poe’s “The Black Cat.” The point is that the philosophical horizon that Brassier-Meillassoux-Badiou occupy is ultimately foreign to Harman, who also writes literary criticism per se, while Meillassoux’s book on Mallarmé concerns mathematical number, which is both liberatory and capitalism-as-usual in Badiou. Support for the difference between Speculative Realism of the Brassier-Meillassoux variety and OOO can be found in Nathan Brown’s succinct demolition of Harman, a critique that has garnered much commentary for allegedly being uncollegial, yet Peter Wolfendale’s book has demonstrated the same with relentless philosophical rigor (see Brown, “The Nadir...

Thinking through Poetry: Field Reports on Romantic Lyric. Marjorie Levinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xi+330.

<i>Thinking through Poetry: Field Reports on Romantic Lyric</i>. Marjorie Levinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xi+330.

Is positive emotion an amplifier or a buffer? It depends: Dialectical thinking moderates the impact of positive emotion on intergroup conflicts.

Positive emotions have been shown to shape individuals' reactions to intergroup conflicts, but the exact mechanism remains unknown. The current research hypothesizes that the impact of positive emotions would be moderated by dialectical thinking: beliefs about accepting contradiction and change. Experiencing positive emotions in an intergroup conflict may be perceived as unacceptable and evokes discomfort among nondialectical individuals, amplifying the negative reactions toward outgroup members. In contrast, because dialectical thinkers accept contradictory emotions, positive emotions may buffer against the adverse consequences of intergroup provocations. Study 1 confirmed this hypothesis by examining Chinese emotions in a real-life and a lab-induced intergroup conflict. Study 2 recruited Western participants and demonstrated that the moderating effect of dialectical thinking was evident only under a conflict-related context. Study 3 confirmed the causality by manipulating dialectical thinking in a historically enduring conflict. These findings suggest that enhancing dialectical thinking maximized the buffering effect of positive emotion against intergroup conflict. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Brecht in Los Angeles—“in this mausoleum of easy going”

In his book City of Quartz from 1990, the urban theorist Mike Davis criticized Bertolt Brecht for having failed to explore the “real-life Mahagonny” and “thriving local labor movement” of Los Angeles while he lived there from 1941 to 1947. For someone who considered himself a dialectical thinker, Brecht showed surprisingly little interest in the specific historical dialectic that had shaped Los Angeles. Shortly after moving there, he had already accepted the myth of the “City of Angels” as a hellish materialization of advanced capitalism. The purpose of this essay, which mostly draws upon Brecht’s journal entries, is not to refute Davis’s assessment but to take a closer look at Brecht’s preconceptions and perceptions of American culture and politics to better grasp why he largely ignored, or refused to engage with, the politically progressive developments and working-class movement in a place where he spent six years of his life.

DIALECTICS OF THE CONCRETE AND HISTORICAL-CRITICAL PEDAGOGY IN BRAZIL

Educational studies in Brazil have a strong tradition based on Marxist dialectical thinkers as Gramsci, Lukacs and Kosik. One of the most significant Marxist approaches in the field of pedagogical theories in Brazil is called Historical-Critical Pedagogy. The non-critical educational approaches have been defending an almost immediate identification of the school contents and methods with the pragmatic needs emerged in everyday practices. This perspective ignores the dialectics phenomena-essence and takes the pseudo-concrete as the real concrete. Historical-Critical Pedagogy takes the opposite direction and understands that the way to engage school education in a transformative social praxis is to organize the school curriculum in order to provide the conceptual tools required to take the “detour” that Kosik, based on Marx, considered necessary for human beings to grasp the essence of social reality. This paper will be an attempt to explore the points of intersection between Dialectics of Concrete and Historical-Critical Pedagogy.

Dialectical Thinkers’ Divergence in Responding to Questions including Mixed Wordings and Frames

The use of mixed wordings in phrasing scale items often produces method effects, such as divergence between responses to positively worded items (PWIs) and responses to negatively worded items (NWIs), resulting in a two-factor solution instead of a one-factor solution. The present study suggests that the method effect that occurs due to the use of mixed wordings of scale items is also present for responses to positively and negatively framed questions that employ an interrogative format. In addition, the present study suggests that the occurrence of the method effect caused by mixed wordings and mixed frames is influenced by the dialectical thinking tendency of respondents. Study one showed that responses to PWIs and responses to NWIs diverged from each other for respondents who had a stronger tendency toward dialectical thinking. For dialectical thinkers, PWIs and NWIs constituted separate factors, and the correlation of scores between PWIs and NWIs was relatively low. In study two, the respondents estimated future outcomes by responding to positively and negatively framed interrogative questions that included experts’ optimistic and pessimistic forecasts of future outcomes. The study showed that responses to the positively framed question including an optimistic forecast and responses to the negatively framed question including a pessimistic forecast diverged from each other when respondents had a stronger tendency toward dialectical thinking. The influence of dialectical thinking was evident, particularly when the respondent’s estimation was based on the past record showing an upward trend but not when it was based on the past record lacking a trend. The findings are discussed with respect to the literature of the method effect and the research of dialectical thinking.

The role of dialecticism and reviewer expertise in consumer responses to mixed reviews

An overwhelming majority of consumers read online reviews prior to making purchase decisions, and such reviews often contain both positive and negative evaluations about a company or a brand. However, there is scant research examining how reviewer expertise and dialecticism (i.e., understanding of contradictory information) simultaneously influence the impact of review valence (i.e., either univalent positive/negative or mixed) on consumers’ attitude certainty and decision comfort. The study findings indicate that when reviews are written by non-experts, high dialectical thinkers exhibit similar levels of attitude certainty across univalent and mixed review conditions. Conversely, low dialectical thinkers exhibit higher levels of attitude certainty in the univalent (vs. mixed) review condition. Such an interaction between review valence and dialectical thinking is attenuated when reviews are written by experts. Theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.

Irony and Idealism: Rereading Schlegel, Hegel, and Kierkegaard by Fred Rush

Reviewed by: Irony and Idealism: Rereading Schlegel, Hegel, and Kierkegaard by Fred Rush Nathan Ross Fred Rush. Irony and Idealism: Rereading Schlegel, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xvi + 312. Cloth, $85.00. The founder of early German Romantic philosophy, Friedrich Schlegel, is a pivotal figure in the history of philosophy because of the way that he establishes many of the themes by which nineteenth-century continental thought separates itself from Kant. Yet our view of his depth and originality as a thinker has often been distorted by his proximity to Hegel, who propounded a highly polemical and reductive reading of Schlegel. One of the ways in which our view of Schlegel is distorted by Hegel's reading is our association of Schlegel with the stance of irony. While Schlegel considered irony as merely one of several fruitful ways to rethink the relation of the subject to the absolute, Hegel used a reductive reading of this notion of irony to dismiss Schlegel as an immoral and unserious figure with no binding positions or methods. Fred Rush's study, Irony and Idealism, seeks to challenge the subordinate and lesser position of Schlegel within nineteenth-century thought, first by developing a reading of Schlegel as the key, founding figure in German Romanticism, and then by advancing from this reading, first to challenge the methodological primacy of Hegel as a dialectical thinker, and second to trace the Schlegelian provenance of certain themes in Kierkegaard's philosophy. In the first main chapter, Rush constructs an argument to emphasize the originality and centrality of Schlegel as the key, founding figure in Jena Romanticism (rather than Novalis). Within the burgeoning field of Romanticism studies, this is hardly a claim that needs to be made, as most accounts already acknowledge Schlegel's founding status. (Indeed, Rush struggles to produce a single example of a scholar who would disagree with him.) The chapter demonstrates that irony is by no means the central figure in Schlegel's rich methodological vocabulary, and places more emphasis on Schlegel's use of the term Wechselerweis (reciprocal proof) and his notion that all experience is founded on regulative ideals. Schlegel challenges us to think of experience as guided by an absolute that is never given in experience and that does not and cannot exist as an object or event. Rush coins the term 'global regulativity' to describe Schlegel's epistemic method. This reading seems well suited to get us beyond a simplistic understanding of Romantic irony as an unserious, uncommitted or relativistic attitude, although it raises the question why subsequent chapters make irony into the central term of comparison. Although I agree with many of Rush's conclusions about Schlegel, his style of exegesis makes it hard to reconstruct his reading because he seldom uses Schlegel's primary texts to advance his argument. Schlegel writes in a manner that is by turns fragmentary, provocative, fascinating, self-reflexive, enigmatic and confusing. First time students as well as seasoned scholars of Schlegel need help in unpacking the primary texts and seeing how they connect. Rush rarely cites key texts at crucial phases in his argument, and engages in heavy paraphrase, often using neologisms. At many points in Rush's argument, I found myself asking: what is his evidence for that reading? What phase of Schlegel's complex development would support that interpretation? [End Page 741] The chapter on Hegel takes a bold line in reversing the customary order between Schlegel and Hegel: it works back from Hegel's well-known critique of Schlegel to develop an account that emphasizes the parallels between Hegel's dialectical method and Schlegel's irony; and then it argues that when we see the two positions in such close proximity, Schlegel has a methodological advantage. Rush argues that both irony and Hegel's dialectics involve a stance of immersing oneself in a shifting intellectual content while also maintaining a sense of distance and detachment as contradictions reveal themselves. But whereas Hegel's method allegedly involves working towards a final standpoint of closure, Schlegel makes his ironic stance into a regulative ideal that can never be achieved. In Rush's account, Schlegel's stance seems to involve greater...

From the Nadir of Negativity towards the Cusp of Reconciliation

This contribution addresses the anthropocenic challenge from a dialectical perspective, combining a diagnostics of the present with a prognostic of the emerging future. It builds on the oeuvres of two prominent dialectical thinkers, namely Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Hegel himself was a pre-anthropocenic thinker who did not yet thematise the anthropocenic challenge as such, but whose work allows us to emphasise the unprecedented newness of the current crisis. I will especially focus on his views on Earth as a planetary process, emphasising that (in the current situation) the “spirit” of technoscience is basically monitoring the impacts of its own activities on geochemistry and evolution. Subsequently, I will turn attention to Teilhard de Chardin, a palaeontologist and philosopher rightfully acknowledged as one of the first thinkers of the Anthropocene whose oeuvre provides a mediating middle term between Hegel’s conceptual groundwork and the anthropocenic present. Notably, I will discuss his views on self-directed evolution, on the on-going absorption of the biosphere by the noosphere, and on emerging options for “sublating” the current crisis into a synthetic convergence towards (what Teilhard refers to as) the Omega point. I will conclude that (a), after disclosing the biomolecular essence of life, biotechnology must now take a radical biomimetic turn (a shift from domesticating nature to the domestication of domestication, i.e., of technology); that (b) reflection itself must become distributed and collective; and (c), that the anthropocenic crisis must be sublated into the noocene.

The Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex Modulates Dialectical Self-Thinking.

Dialectical self-thinking involves holding the view that one can possess contradictory traits such as extraverted and introverted. Prior work has demonstrated that the dorsal part of anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) plays a crucial role in conflict monitoring as well as self-related processing. Here, we tested the function of dACC in dialectical self-thinking using a modified classical self-referential paradigm (self- vs. other-referential thinking), in which participants had to make a judgment whether a simultaneously presented pair of contradictory or non-contradictory traits properly described them while brain activity was recording using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The data showed that activity in the dACC during the processing of self-relevant conflicting information was positively correlated with participants’ dispositional level of naïve dialecticism (measured with the Dialectical Self Scale). Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses further revealed increased functional connectivity between the dACC and the caudate, middle temporal gyrus and hippocampus during the processing of self-relevant conflicting information for dialectical thinkers. These results support the hypothesis that the dACC has a key role in dialectical self-thinking.

The effect of dialectical thinking on the integration of contradictory information

Although lower dialectical thinking has been associated with greater extremity in consumer responses to univalent information, we demonstrate that low, as compared to high, dialectical thinkers express more moderate attitudes when they result from processing contradictory information. Specifically, our studies find that contradictory product information is less fluently processed by consumers low (vs. high) in dialectical thinking, which reduces their judgmental confidence and, in turn, generates more moderate attitudes. We contribute to the literature by showing that in contexts of contradictory information integration, current theory regarding the consequences of dialectical thinking needs to be extended to include not only an attenuation of the extremity effect prior research has found, but a complete reversal. Our results further imply that processing fluency not only impacts attitude valence but, more generally, attitude extremity.

Keats, Hegel, and Belated Mythography

This essay aims to contribute to a growing body of criticism devoted to the paradox of John Keats's peculiarly political aestheticism. Keats places a seemingly disinterested aestheticism squarely within the matrix of history, at a time when history itself was coming into its own as a philosophical category. Hyperion's figurations share the theoretical horizon of Keats's contemporaries in post-Kantian philosophy and betray a concern with one of the formative impulses behind Hegel's system-building: the interplay of myth and rationality. Reading Hyperion in comparison with a line of dialectical thinkers from Schiller to Adorno, I locate Keats's engagement with history precisely where he appears to suspend it: in those sculptural figurations of stasis in which the poem depicts, and to no small degree fetishizes, the archaic. An ironic myth of myth's demise, Hyperion exposes the fetishism latent in post-Enlightenment mythography.

The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard Revisited

Abstract: The essayists included here are in agreement that Augustine and Kierkegaard were primarily rhetorical theologians, and that they shared much in common concerning the role of desire for God in the Christian life. Most of the authors stress certain aspects of Augustine's and Kierkegaard's theological vision, and they are right to do so. However, both Augustine and Kierkegaard were dialectical thinkers, and often contrapuntal themes, different from those emphasized by our essayists, can be discerned in their works. Augustine and Kierkegaard were both capable of asserting different things in different contexts in order to pursue different edifying purposes.

Dialectical Thinking Reduces Aggressive Tendencies

People process information in fundamentally different ways.When people think dialectically,they tend to be holistic,reconcile contradictions,and emphasize changes.There are marked differences in the cognitive processes between dialectical thinkers and analytical thinkers,including categorization,causal attribution,reliance on rules,use of logic,and preference for dialectical understanding of events (Nisbett Masuda,2003).It is believed that the origin of these differences can be traced back to different social systems so that East Asians (including Chinese) tend to be dialectical whereas Westerners tend to be analytical (Nisbett,Peng,Choi, Norenzayan,2001).Because dialectical thinking emphasizes reconciliation and constant changes,it may be able to increase people’s tolerance of differences,reduce extreme attitudes,and decrease extreme behaviors.Here we hypothesize that dialectical thinking reduces aggressive tendencies,which is often initiated by differences and fueled by extreme attitudes.We initiate a new line of research on whether dialectical thinking affects people’s aggression level.The present research examines the impact of dialectical thinking on aggressive behavior.In particular,we sought to provide the first test of a new mechanism by which dialectical thinking might reduce aggressive tendencies.Study 1 is a correlation study.We measured both dialectical thinking tendencies and aggressive tendencies.In Study 2 and Study 3,we primed participants with dialectical thinking and examined their choices of weapon in a bear-shooting game.We want to see whether increased dialectical tendencies are associated with reduced aggressive tendencies.In Study 1,participants with dialectical thinking tendencies,measured by a dialectical thinking assessment scale (Chiu,2000),tended to express themselves in a nonaggressive way,as measured by the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (Buss Perry,1992).In Study 2,compared with the control group,participants who had been primed with dialectical thinking selected less bullets and weaker weapons in the bear-shooting game.In Study 3,we replicated the findings of the Study 2 with a modified dialectical thinking prime.A mediation analysis showed that the priming effect of reducing aggressive tendencies was mediated by increasing the dialectical thinking.Taken together,results showed that dialectical thinking leads to reduced aggression.This research documents that dialectical thinking reduces aggressive tendencies.It is possible that trainings in dialectical thinking can help people control their aggressive urges and reduce violence in the societal level.The research constitutes an initial step toward establishing dialectical thinking as a potential mechanism to fight against aggression and restore interpersonal and societal harmony.

Culturally based lay beliefs as a tool for understanding intergroup and intercultural relations

Dialectical thinking represents a constellation of culturally based lay theories about the nature of the world in which social objects are viewed as inherently contradictory, fundamentally interconnected, and in constant flux. In this paper, we argue that dialectical thinking gives rise to cultural differences in numerous social cognitive phenomena (e.g., stereotyping) that are known to influence intergroup and intercultural relations. Specifically, we present psychological evidence relating dialectical thinking to cultural (East–West) differences in social categorization, causal attribution, group perception, stereotyping, ingroup/outgroup attitudes, cooperative/competitive behavior, and cross-cultural adjustment and competence. Dialectical thinkers are hypothesized, for example, to be less vulnerable to essentialistic, rigid thinking about social groups and more open to stereotype change and intercultural adaptation. We note important topics in need of further investigation and offer predictions regarding possible cultural differences in as yet unexplored social cognitive domains.

Violent Places: Three Years in Europe and the Question of William Wells Brown’s Cosmopolitanism

Violent Places: Three Years in Europe and the Question of William Wells Brown’s Cosmopolitanism Martha Schoolman (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Tintern Abbey. Engraving by D. Cox, from Wanderings and Excursions in South Wales . . ., by Thomas Roscoe (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), facing 149. [End Page iv] This essay aims to unfix William Wells Brown from what has become his accustomed critical role as an under-examined nineteenth-century avatar of the democratic and integrationist aspirations of liberal cosmopolitanism. It argues instead for reinterpreting Brown as a dialectical thinker of the limitations of a cosmopolitanism that would equate the transcendence of place with the transcendence of race. Taking as my subject what would seem to be the least promising of Brown’s works for such an inquiry, his formally rough but intellectually germinal second autobiography Three Years in Europe: Places I have Seen and People I have Met (1852), I consider the means by which Brown transforms the acts of “seeing” and “meeting” into a productive critique of the kind of political imaginary that would wish to elevate the pleasures of circulation over the challenges of solidarity. In a recent account of the resurgence of cosmopolitanism in cultural studies, Amanda Anderson offers the following general definition: “cosmopolitanism endorses reflective distance from one’s cultural affiliations, a broad understanding of other cultures and customs, and a belief in universal humanity.” “In the twentieth century,” she continues, “I think we can fairly say that it is defined against those parochialisms emanating from extreme allegiances to nation, race, and ethnos. In very recent defenses of cosmopolitanism, the ethnos rhetorically reaches [End Page 1] to include any identity politics conceived along the model of the ethnic enclave.”1 In other words, cosmopolitanism today is best apprehended in spatial terms as “endorsing” a geography of identity cast as a geography of selective disidentification. To be cosmopolitan, that is, means to cultivate a broader frame of reference than the place or people of one’s origin—to view in relative and even ironic terms what one’s purported fellows deem natural and unworthy of comment. This interest in cosmopolitanism both as a contemporary critical stance to be assumed and a past critical stance to be recovered has surfaced across fields and periods, from Anderson’s Victorian studies, to British literary modernism, to political philosophy, to African and South Asian studies, to name a few prominent examples.2 However, critics have differed about whether to consider the cosmopolitan position as necessarily elite or popular, Western or non-Western, flowing with or against capital, or by definition spanning or even obviating such binary distinctions. In U.S. American studies of the last decade or so, however, it is the African American intellectual of the pre-Civil Rights era who has emerged as the category-spanning cosmopolitan figure par excellence. Making in essence a cultual virtue of a political tragedy—of deracination, of limited access to citizenship and national belonging—the African American intellectual finds forms of detachment, reflection, and higher cultural synthesis that out of choice or out of necessity transcend local attachments, whether such attachments be defined in relation to the plantation, the neighborhood, the region, the nation, or the race. In its most salient current critical formulation, African American cosmopolitanism shares the characteristic North Atlantic geography of elite cosmopolitanism. Drawing inspiration from Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic, U.S. critics Ross Posnock and Elisa Tamarkin have treated the transcendence of the local as generally synonymous with transit from the ethnic enclaves of the U.S. to the cosmopolitan cities of Europe. In Europe, Gilroy argues, the African American artist discovers the broader frame of black identity as figuratively oceanic rather than parochial, and learns to embrace the Enlightenment intellectual tradition as a common rather than exclusively [End Page 2] white inheritance.3 Taking as emblematic W. E. B. Du Bois’s presence in France during the Dreyfus Affair, Posnock traces the development within African American letters of the Europeanized cosmopolitan category of the intellectual as a figure able to transcend racial identity and overcome the “segregation” of aesthetics from politics imposed on the more conventional figure of the “race man.”4...

The Dialectical Self-Concept II

Although there is growing evidence that dialectical thinkers express more inconsistency within the global self-concept, whether this holds true for inconsistency across roles and within specific roles has received little attention. I examine whether dialectical thinking is associated with less cross-role and within-role consistency and whether dialecticism moderates the relationship between self-consistency and subjective well-being, self-concept certainty, and felt authenticity. Participants completed measures of the above outcomes, a measure of dialectical thinking, and a self-description measure for both the global self-concept and within two roles (e.g., friend), from which I derived both cross-role and within-role consistency scores. Dialectical thinking predicted lower scores on both types of consistency, and in general dialecticism moderated the relationship between self-concept consistency and both subjective well-being and self-concept certainty. Dialecticism also moderated the relationship between cross-role consistency and authenticity, and the relationship between authenticity and subjective well-being. I conclude by discussing directions for future research.