In his new book, Michal Jan Rozbicki undertakes to bridge the gap between
the political and the cultural histories of the American Revolution. Through a careful examination
of liberty as both the ideological axis and the central metaphor of the age, he is able to offer a
fresh model for interpreting the Revolution. By establishing systemic linkages between the histories
of the free and the unfree, and between the factual and the symbolic, this framework points to a
fundamental reassessment of the ways we think about the American
Founding.Rozbicki moves beyond the two dominant interpretations of Revolutionary
liberty--one assuming the Founders invested it with a modern meaning that has in essence
continued to the present day, the other highlighting its apparent betrayal by their commitment to
inequality. Through a consistent focus on the interplay between culture and power, Rozbicki
demonstrates that liberty existed as an intricate fusion of political practices and symbolic forms.
His deeply historicized reconstruction of its contemporary meanings makes it clear that liberty was
still understood as a set of privileges distributed according to social rank rather than a universal
right. In fact, it was because the Founders considered this assumption self-evident that they
felt confident in publicizing a highly liberal, symbolic narrative of equal liberty to represent the
Revolutionary endeavor. The uncontainable success of this narrative went far beyond the
circumstances that gave birth to it because it put new cultural capital--a conceptual arsenal
of rights and freedoms--at the disposal of ordinary people as well as political factions
competing for their support, providing priceless legitimacy to all those who would insist that its
nominal inclusiveness include them in fact.
Copyright:
2011
Book Details
Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780813931548
Related ISBNs:
9780813930640
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Date of Addition:
05/07/13
Copyrighted By:
the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
