Description
Book SynopsisIn Hiding from History, Meili Steele challenges an assumption at the heart of current debates in political, literary, historical, and cultural theory: that it is impossible to reason through history. Steele believes that two influential schools of...
Trade Review"Hiding from History is an excellent book on a very important issue. It concerns the nature of practical reason, how we deliberate about good and bad, right and wrong. Of course, we deliberate as individuals too, but the issue here is how we deliberate in common. Meili Steele addresses the nature of public reason, highlighting the way in which literature can contribute to rational debate, sometimes in ways that philosophical argument cannot match." -- Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, McGill University
"Meili Steele has written a great book, tightly argued, but expansive in scope. He shows how contemporary political thought and action have been handcuffed by the persistent attempt to transcend historical and cultural specificity. His compelling alternative of 'public imagination' avoids multiculturalism's identity fetishism by understanding culture as a process through which selves can reflect upon, reason about, and revise their lives with others." -- John McGowan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of
Democracy's Children
