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Revisiting Tocqueville's American Woman, Christine Dunn Henderson
Revisiting Tocqueville's American Woman, Christine Dunn Henderson
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This paper revisits Tocqueville’s famous portrait of the American female, which begins with assertions of her equality to males but ends with her self-cloistering in the domestic sphere. Taking a cue from Tocqueville’s extended sketch of the “faded” pioneer wife in “A Fortnight in the Wilderness” and drawing connections to Tocqueville’s criticisms of the division of industrial labor, I argue that the American girl’s ostensibly free choice to remove herself from public life is not an act of freedom. Rather, it is a manifestation of a particular type of unfreedom that reveals underappreciated connections between the two great dangers about …
Beyond The "Formidable Circle": Race And The Limits Of Democratic Inclusion In Tocqueville's Democracy In America, Christine Dunn Henderson
Beyond The "Formidable Circle": Race And The Limits Of Democratic Inclusion In Tocqueville's Democracy In America, Christine Dunn Henderson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Despite his assertion that the first volume of Democracy in America (1835) would concentrate upon institutions, Tocqueville found himself finishing the draft manuscript in 1834 and unable to conclude his study without discussing race relations in the United States. In the end, he quickly penned a final chapter. That chapter—by far the book’s longest—offers “Some Considerations on the Present State and Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of the United States.” Tocqueville begins the chapter by acknowledging that its subject “is American without being democratic” (DA, p. 516), and to the extent that it analyzes slavery …
Whose Traditions? Which Practices?, Sor-Hoon Tan
Whose Traditions? Which Practices?, Sor-Hoon Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
My response to Tully’s article, “Deparochializing Political Theory and Beyond,” suggests that before introducing students in Asia to comparative political thought, including texts from Asian traditions in Political Theory or Philosophy courses, their education needs to first engage in the critical practice of questioning their own “background horizon of disclosure.” The background horizon of disclosure that needs questioning certainly is not simply constituted by Asian traditions; despite westernized education, it is also not entirely western, insofar as the society they live in continues to be Asian in various ways, and the adopted western institutions and modes of thought have been …