A COMPANION TO AMERICAN THOUGHT

A COMPANION TO AMERICAN THOUGHT. Edited by Richard Wightman Fox and James T. Kloppenberg. Blackwell. 804 pp. $39.95

The appearance of this book is a welcome sign that intellectual history is making a comeback in the academy--and not a moment too soon. For more than two decades, the arbiters of scholarly fashion have all but written it off. While themselves writing in the most exquisitely impenetrable jargon, social historians, pop culture enthusiasts, identity politicians, and theory-ridden ideologues have derided intellectual history as an "elitist" preoccupation that unjustly "privileges" the articulate, literate, and educated.

Yet such oddly self-contradictory criticism has never quite carried the day. During the same period, the disciplined study of intellectual history has continued to grow, attracting many of the most talented younger scholars--including the editors of this volume.

This is a work of ambitious scope, with entries on a dizzying array of subjects, from "abstract expressionism," to "evangelicalism," "legal realism" to "youth." Many are long interpretive essays, contributed by eminent scholars, falling into one of three categories: individuals (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Rorty); events (the Armory Show of 1913, the American Revolution); or concepts (freedom, modernism, citizenship). At its best, the book combines the factual handiness of, say, The Oxford Companion to American Literature with the reflectiveness of works such as the Dictionary of the History of Ideas or Raymond Williams's Keywords.

The Companion is not without its flaws. To borrow a comparison from the world of magazines, this is a writer's encyclopedia, not an editor's encyclopedia. Rather than assemble a tightly edited, tucked-canvas view of American culture, Fox and Kloppenberg have contracted with notable writers, then turned them loose. Such a characteristically "postmodern" choice is not without justification. But predictably, the result is a volume as full of crosscurrents as a turbulent ocean. The question: is this a fair reflection of the contemporary academy, or does it betray a concession to esoteric concerns that is undesirable in a general reference work?

The answer is: both. Many of the essays are masterfully done, precisely because they go beyond the conventional wisdom-mongering typical of encyclopedias. For example, Thomas Haskell's essay on academic freedom is an elegantly concise goad to serious reflection. Likewise Christopher Lasch on guilt, Robert Westbrook on John Dewey, Dorothy Ross on liberalism, David Blight on Frederick Douglass, Jean Bethke Elshtain on Jane Addams, and many others.

But other essays, such as the entry on "body," spin jargon to the point of parody: "The violences and pleasures induced by the unstable arrangements of possession, mechanics, and mediation are the landmarks of corporeality in our culture." Similarly, the essay on virtue treats that venerable concept as little more than a battleground for gender issues--a worthwhile perspective, perhaps, but should it dominate here?

Still other essays get entangled in the scholarly disputes of the day. For instance, it is strange to see the Great Awakening discussed by a scholar vehemently committed to the position that such a religious revival never occurred. Equally odd is a treatment of republicanism that views the concept as a retrospective invention of today's historians. Though expertly done, these insider pieces will be of limited use to readers who are not members of the guild.

In fairness to the editors, they did not create the lapses, lacunae, and lunacies of contemporary "American thought." However regrettable, the enormous gap between academic and democratic discourse is real, and this book could not help but reflect it. At the same time, the many outstanding essays collected in this volume--examples of intellectual history at its best--offer hope that the gap may yet be closed.

--Wilfred M. McClay