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A Better Pluralism? The Example of Louis Adamic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
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For the Slovenian-born journalist, novelist and populist historian Louis Adamic, Ellis Island was as central to American civilization as Plymouth Rock. Throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, Adamic dedicated himself to raising public awareness about the essential role of immigrants in the life of the nation. Adamic chronicled the stories and contributions of famous and not-so-famous immigrants from a variety of ethnic groups and challenged his adopted country to be true to its democratic ideals.
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References
NOTES
1. McWilliams, Carey, Louis Adamic and Shadow America (Los Angeles: A. Whipple, 1935), 10Google Scholar.
2. As far as I can tell, Adamic did not use the term pluralism, but his emphasis on the value of diversity certainly makes him a pluralist. The term is nevertheless somewhat vague. John Higham explains the various and ambiguous distinctions between multiculturalism and pluralism: “Some radical multiculturalists still invoke pluralism in their founding principles but their indignant opponents often describe multiculturalism as an abandonment and betrayal of pluralism and middle of the road educators represent pluralism as strain within multiculturalism, balanced by assimilation” (“Multiculturalism and Universalism: A History and Critique,” American Quarterly 45 [06 1993]: 205Google Scholar). Part of my project in this essay is to distinguish Adamic's pluralism from both more radical, staunchly subversive strands of multiculturalism and a pluralist consensus that fails to confront the status quo.
3. Harney, Robert, “E Pluribus Unum: Louis Adamic and the Meaning of Ethnic History,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 14 (Spring 1986): 35Google Scholar.
4. Gordon, Milton, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 156Google Scholar.
5. Adamic, Louis, “Aliens and Alien-Baters,” Harper's 173 (11 1936): 1–16 (quotation, 14)Google Scholar.
6. Adamic, Louis, From Many Lands (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940), 301Google Scholar.
7. Matthews, Fred, “Cultural Pluralism in Context: External History, Philosophic Premise, and Theories of Ethnicity,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 12 (Summer 1984): 63–79 (quotation, 68)Google Scholar.
8. Adamic, Louis, My America (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1938), 41Google Scholar.
9. Letter from Granville Hicks to Adamic, April 3, 1932, in the Louis Adamic Papers (CO 246), Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. Published with permission of the Princeton University Library; hereafter referred to as Adamic Papers. Used by Permission.
10. Letter from Adamic to Granville Hicks, April 4, 1932, Adamic Papers.
11. Halper, Albert, Good-by Union Square: A Writer's Memoirs of the Thirties (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970), 140Google Scholar.
12. Adamic, , My America, 34Google Scholar.
13. Christian, Henry A., Louis Adamic: A Checklist (Kent, Ohio: Kent University Press, 1971), xliGoogle Scholar.
14. A similar point was made by Congressman Clare Hoffman of Michigan in a letter to Adamic: “If we are a nations of nations, why not forget the ‘nations’ and just be a nation. Why a hyphenated American? Do not societies and organizations which carry on under hyphenated names tend to prevent us being a ‘Nation of Nations’” (letter to Louis Adamic, November 3, 1945, Adamic Papers).
15. Nevins, Allan, “Allan Nevins Praises Louis Adamic for His Spirited Defense of Our Racial Minorities,” New York Post, 12 3, 1945, 3Google Scholar.
16. Adamic, Louis, Nation of Nations (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1945), 9, 11Google Scholar.
17. Ibid., 297.
18. Ibid., 298.
19. Letter and memorandum to Read Lewis, March 1, 1944, Adamic Papers.
20. Fischer, Michael, “Pluralism and the Future of Difference,” unpublished paper delivered at the Midwest Modern Language Association Convention,St. Louis,1992Google Scholar.
21. One of the most trenchant recent arguments against pluralism is made by Ellen Rooney in Seductive Reasoning. She asserts that pluralism demands that every one is “amenable to persuasion” (5) and therefore does not allow room for those who refuse to be persuaded, those who stand outside of the congenial, rational atmosphere of the “democratic” society. The pluralist logic is compelling and disarms challenges: “The assertion of difference seems all too easily recuperated by the seductions of pluralist center.” The antidote to pluralism, according to Rooney, is “the assertion of irreducible difference … a strategy of the break or of discontinuity (Seductive Reasoning: Pluralism as the Problematic of Contemporary Literary Theory [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989], 245, 214Google Scholar). Although Rooney recognizes that voices opposing pluralist hegemony may also become totalizing, her view does not account for the possibility that one can move both outside of and within a pluralist consensus.
22. Adamic, Louis, Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America (New York: Viking, 1931), 428Google Scholar.
23. Adamic, , Nation of Nations, 204Google Scholar.
24. Ibid., 217.
25. Sollors, Werner, “A Critique of Pure Pluralism,” in Reconstructing American Literary History, ed. Bercovitch, Sacvan (New York: Harvard University Press, 1986), 273Google Scholar.
26. Adamic, Louis, What's Your Name? (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942), 14Google Scholar.
27. Ibid., 16.
28. Sollors, , “Critique of Pure Pluralism,” 259Google Scholar.
29. Adamic, Louis, Two-Way Passage (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941), 95Google Scholar.
30. Hollinger, David A., Post-Ethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic, 1995), 3–4Google Scholar.
31. Ibid., 97.
32. Adamic, , From Many Lands, 347Google Scholar.
33. I argue that Hollinger's cosmopolitanism is not sufficiently distinct from pluralism — not sufficiently distinct to warrant the demise of a concept with historical currency and broad appeal. Perhaps pluralism implies group-mindedness and provincialism, but ethnic solidarity is often pragmatic, politically expedient and necessary.
34. Adamic, , From Many Lands, 3–52 (quotations, 4, 52)Google Scholar.
35. Ibid., 192.
36. Letter from Adamic to Morris B. Lazoran, February 6, 1939, Adamic Papers.
37. Joseph Remenyi, for example, criticizes Adamic for his lack of aesthetic sophistication and claims that his intellect was not “consistently substantial.” Remenyi further asserts that “much of his work is written in a vein that justifies the space of a newspaper or of an alarmist magazine but should not be between the pages of a book” (“Louis Adamic: A Portrait,” College English [11 1943]: 63–64Google Scholar). Certainly, Adamic made no pretenses about the literary merit of his publications, and he often commented that even his boldest ideas did not belong to him alone.