Introduction

Abstract

We generally take for granted that the foundation on which American democracy rests is the interactive, and ever-evolving landscape of civil society-the social and civic associations of Alexis de Tocqueville’s (1835/2002) famous observations. But whether or not we agree with Robert Putnam (1994, 2000) that American civic associations have for decades been on the decline and that more and more Americans are “bowling alone,” we must confront the question of whether the public activity, debate, and inclusivity of our political and social organizations is enough to sustain the health of our system of democratic representative government, and the political culture it engenders. Do our associations harness a collective of truly independent and community-minded voices? Or is civil society's sincerity and effectiveness threatened by the excessively individualistic emphasis in popular culture, and as a result of this, the largely conformist tendencies that underlie American democratic culture? Do our civil organizations encourage sincere democratic life? And if these interactions do manage to keep democracy alive in our public spaces, and in our public interactions and debates, do they allow us only short sporadic breaths, heavy with dust?

Instinctual revolt turns into political rebellion.

Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation

Even the most realistic oeuvre [of art] constructs a reality of its own: its men and women, its objects, its landscape, its music reveals what remains unsaid, unseen, unheard in everyday life.

Herbert Marcuse, “Art as Form of Reality”

It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably everyday for lack of what is found there.

William Carlos Williams, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”