Democracy's Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W.E.B. Du Bois

by Lawrie Balfour

In Democracy's Reconstruction , the latest addition to Cathy Cohen and Fredrick Harris's Transgressing Boundaries series, noted political theorist Lawrie Balfour challenges a longstanding tendency in political the disciplinary division that separates political theory proper from the study of black politics. Political theory rarely engages with black political thinkers, despite the fact that the problem of racial inequality is central to the entire enterprise of American political theory. To address this lacuna, she focuses on the political thought of W.E.B. Du Bois, particularly his longstanding concern with the relationship between slavery's legacy and the prospects for democracy in the era he lived in. Balfour utilizes Du Bois as an intellectual resource, applying his method of addressing contemporary problems via the historical prism of slavery to address some of the fundamental racial divides and inequalities in contemporary America. By establishing his theoretical
method to study these historical connections, she positions Du Bois's work in the political theory canon--similar to the status it already has in history, sociology, philosophy, and literature.

Genres: Politics

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 25, 2011

About the author

Lawrie Balfour teaches political theory and American studies at the University of Virginia. The author of Democracy's Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W. E. B. Du Bois (2011) and The Evidence of Things Not Said: James Baldwin and the Promise of American Democracy (2001), she has published numerous articles and book chapters of race, gender, literature, and democracy. Currently she is working on two projects: one on reparations for slavery, Jim Crow, and their legacies; and another on the meanings of freedom in Toni Morrison's novels and essays. She also serves as editor of Political Theory.