| Abstrakt: |
As a distinctively American philosophy, pragmatism provides the philosophical foundation for many progressive thinkers in the African American intellectual tradition. For some, pragmatism can serve as an instrument for addressing our contemporary racial challenges and the afterlife of slavery in the United States. Ironically, it is challenging to situate Ralph Ellison comfortably in this intellectual lineage—even though several scholars have located and studied him and his work within the context of pragmatism. In fact, Ellison's polemics and contradictions mirror the problems and paradoxes one often finds among leading pragmatic thinkers in the Progressive Era, including John Dewey and Frederick Winslow Taylor. However, few studies consider what we can learn when Ellison's work is imagined within the context of Dewey's and Taylor's competing appreciations of scientific management. This interdisciplinary survey explores this context by revealing how a recalibration of Ellison's writing can help us to see how scientific management and its imperative emerge in slavery and later proliferate in American education. Based on this evidence, it becomes more difficult to argue that pragmatism can serve as an effective tool for addressing and transforming our contemporary racial challenges and the afterlife of slavery in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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