Document Type
Article
Abstract
This paper examines and questions two dominant narratives about the role of literary leftist intellectuals in the United States following World War II: the New Americanist "paradigm" and the corrective account of Old Left intellectuals that draws attention to the communist commitments of core public intellectuals whose cultural work had a lasting, progressive impact on American life. In order to critique both these versions of American leftist intellectual history, the United States' long tradition of anarchist dissent is re-established. Tracing out its submerged anarchism and anti-state themes, alternative political tendencies in literature and scholarship are identified as central to resisting Cold War conformity.
Repository Citation
Brown, James P.. "Canons of Dissent: Anarchy, the 'Cold War' Canon, and the Anti-Statist Left in the United States." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1–20. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol8/iss1/13