Now showing 1 - 10 of 16
  • Publication
    Rand, Ayn
    (Charles Scribner's Sons, 2016) ;
    Blum, Edward J.
    ;
    Burnidge, Cara
    ;
    Conroy-Krutz, Emily
    ;
    Kinkela, David
  • Publication
    "Keep It in a Gray Fog" : Ayn Rand's Contentious Relationship with Europe
    (Northeastern Political Science Association, 2011-11-17)
    The novels and political ideas of Ayn Rand (1905-1982) have recently experienced a renaissance, also thanks to the Tea Party movement. While Rand is widely read across the United States, she is practically unknown in Europe, where she was born. In spite of her Russian roots, childhood travels around Europe and her delight in European art and literature, Rand distanced herself from Europe and instead celebrated the United States as the only free country, superior to the ossified old continent. In her most influential novel, Atlas Shrugged, Europe is kept, as she explained it in her journal, “in a gray fog.” This paper will show that this disdain for Europe developed gradually and mirrored Rand’s own dream of what has been termed the least European experience, the frontier. In a first step, the paper retraces how and explains why, in Ayn Rand’s writings, Europe turned from a land of hope to a place of no consequence. This is followed by an analysis of Rand’s paradoxical appraisal of American and European art, which runs counter to her overall esteem for the two cultures. Although she sees in America the only country with a system conducive to innovation, she favored innovative art from Europe, a fact particularly noteworthy in light of Objectivist theory that taste was based on reason. The paper finally discusses how Rand replicates the frontier experience in her novels: the initial dream of flight across national borders developed into pioneer aspirations of settling far from the constraints of civilization.
  • Publication
    The Allure of Anna Granite or Mirroring Ayn Rand's Persuasive Power
    (APSA American Political Science Association, 2013-08-31)
    To the respondents of a survey by the Library of Congress in 1991, she is the author of the most influential book, second only to the Bible; to many conservatives, libertarians and Tea Party adherents, she was what historian Jennifer Burns dubbed "a gateway drug to life on the right"; to many scholars, she was simply the author of bad novels who paraded as a philosopher but did not get involved in the academic discourse; and to "The New Republic," she is just one of the most overrated intellectuals: Ayn Rand (1914-1982), repeatedly believed to be no longer relevant, polarized during her lifetime and still does so today. Many wonder, not least in the Western European press, how she could achieve such iconic status in spite of the literary qualities of her work and her difficult personality. This paper tries to grasp what made Ayn Rand such a compelling figure and her ideas so pertinent to many. To this end, it approaches Rand and her philosophy through novels and other works of fiction that are either inspired by Ayn Rand or feature her as a character. It will thus show how this libertarian intellectual is re-imagined in novels like Tobias Wolff's "Old School" (2003) or Mary Gaitskill's "Two Girls, Fat and Thin" (1991), and how these novelists try to put their finger on what made Rand so convincing. In a similar fashion, the paper will discuss how recasting Rand's political ideas in science fiction, for instance in Nancy Kress's "Beggars in Spain" (1991), reveals both the allure and the danger of Rand's world of ideas.
  • Publication
    From a Society of Second-Handers to Galt's Gulch : Ayn Rand's Counter-Worlds
    In the wake of the economic crisis and with the rise of the Tea Party Movement in the United States, Ayn Rand's novels have been (re-)discovered by a large readership. Advocating a stark individualism and laissez-faire capitalism, Rand's opus magnum Atlas Shrugged (1957) resonates with many Americans' fears that their country may resemble more and more the dystopian world shown in the novel. At the same time, many entrepreneurs dream of the kind of "corporate utopia" that the readers encounter in Galt's Gulch. Atlas Shrugged thus presents two counter-worlds, no in-between or ambiguous spaces. Although Rand's last novel is particularly built on the contrasts and proximity of utopian and dystopian worlds, she plays with these antipodes in her entire fictional oeuvre. This paper suggests that the latter is not only a narrative technique which shall better transport her works' political message, but that it also reflects how Rand perceived her past home continent, Europe. In order to explain the latter, the paper first briefly introduces Ayn Rand, her work, and its significance for the American Right. In a second step, it retraces how the development of counter-worlds becomes very early on a central feature in Rand's fiction. Finally, it will discuss the significance of this narrative theme both with regard to Rand's political intentions and convictions.
  • Publication
    Kantian Evil and Aristotelian Misunderstandings : Randian Readings of Great Philosophers
    In 1972, William F. O'Neill observed that: "Writing about Ayn Rand is a treacherous undertaking. In most intellectual circles, she is either totally ignored or simply dismissed out of hand, and those who take her seriously enough to examine her point of view frequently place themselves in grave danger of guilt by association." While this is still very much the case in the United States, and may have even worsened due to Rand's rising status in the wake of the Tea Party movement, one usually profits from a less biased continental European audience. Here, Rand is still very much unknown, which is why I would like to briefly introduce her to you and maybe cast some light on the question why she is so hated and despised in the United States: Ayn Rand was born as Alisa Rosenbaum in pre-revolutionary Russia, but emigrated at the age of 21 to the United States. There, she hoped to become a successful screen writer, and eventually saw her first novel published in 1936. Her third novel, The Fountainhead, published in 1943, brought her to national attention; not so much because critics praised it - in fact, they did not - but because readers responded so well to it. The novel celebrates stark individualism, resistance to the needs of society and it divides the world neatly into creators and second-handers. These themes are further developed in Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, the tale of, as Rand put it, the man who stopped the engine of the world because the latter did not appreciate what its most creative minds offered to it. Rand became a sought-after speaker and political commenter who would no longer write fiction, but focus on the dissemination of her philosophy, called "Objectivism." As you can tell from the introductory quote, though, Rand was never part of the intellectual and/or academic debate of her time. The New Republic ranked her as one of the most over-rated thinkers in 2011, and voiced frustration with Rand's lasting influence: "Despite the fact that Rand's worldview is a crackpot Manicheanism, in which the world is divided between virtuous, productive individuals and lazy parasites, Rand's hold on American conservatism continues to grow, as if real thinking ever is compatible with a cult." Apart from her exchanges with philosopher John Hospers and one appearance at a conference, she was merely a bystander who blamed the philosophers of her time for problems too numerous to be discussed here. This does not mean, however, that she developed her own ideas in a complete philosophical vacuum. In her essays, she frequently referred to a selection of philosophers, mainly Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, and Auguste Comte. This paper suggests that her references to these thinkers were not attempts at a systematic discussion, but rather part of what sociologist Dominik Bartmanski calls a "charisma process." Specifically, I argue that Rand's philosophic critiques are only serving acts of symbolic association or disassociation and of intellectual disambiguation.
  • Publication
    Type:
    Journal:
    Volume:
    Issue:
  • Publication
    Type:
    Journal:
    Issue:
  • Publication
    Type:
    Journal:
    Volume:
    Issue: