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Download or read book The Politics of Resistance in the Early Social Criticism of Wendell Berry written by Darrell Allan Hamlin and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of resistance permeates the political thought of Wendell Berry. The dissertation focuses on some of his earliest published social criticism exhibiting the concept of resistance, considers texts that have previously been neglected by scholars, and examines arguments that have endured in Berry's thought beyond the immediate context in which the criticism was originally offered. Unique in Berry's early claims of personal resistance are stances that operate within traditional forms of cultural and political resistance while simultaneously undermining those methods. Berry's southern agrarian background forms the basis of a self-criticism on the "wound" of white supremacy, contrasted with the broad social criticism of the Nashville Agrarians, whose dissent ignored racist reality in themselves and in the culture they sought to preserve. Similarly, Berry expresses his admiration for the protest-centered arguments of Henry David Thoreau and Vietnam era conscientious objectors while positioning himself to avoid jail. Finally, Berry confronts the violent pathology of American foreign policy in the late 1960s, consequently displacing recognized notions of pacifism with an imaginative but scarcely practicable alternative. The dissertation concludes with a consideration of the relevance of a social critic who distances himself from the prevailing social order and also from established models of dissent.--Author's abstract.