The Trouble With Diversity: A Valve Book Event

For those of you who read me here but not over there, I should warn you: I'm the ringleader of The Trouble With Diversity book event, so posting may be heavy elsewhere, light here this week.  I'll x-post what I write, but I'd prefer you comment on the Valve, as we want to keep the conversation humming.  That said, I want to repost what my prelude over here, so those who want some background but don't read the Valve can follow the conversation (if they so desire).  So, without further ado:

The Trouble With Diversity: A Prelude

As a prelude to next week’s discussion of The Trouble With Diversity, I’m providing some links to recent articles by and about Walter Benn Michaels and the conversaions they elicited.  I’ll follow those with links to scholarly articles about the two books from which The Trouble With Diversity draws its arguments, Our America: Nativism, Modernism and Pluralism and The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History.

Articles by Michaels concerning The Trouble With Diversity:

• “The Trouble With Diversity,” American Prospect, September 12, 2006
• “Class Fictions,” Boston Globe, October 9, 2005
• “Diversity’s False Solace,” New York Times, April 11, 2004
• “Overrating Diversity,” Huffington Post, September 15, 2006
• “Plots Against America: Neoliberalism and Antiracism,” American Literary History 18.2 (2006) [Project Muse]
• “Autobiography of an Ex-White Man,” Transition 73 (1997) [JSTOR]

Commentary on The Trouble With Diversity:

• “Ideology Instead of Identity,” Jennifer Howard, The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 22, 2006
• “Liberty, Equality ... Diversity?,” Scott McLemee
• “The Trouble With Prosperity,” Ezra Klein
• “The Diversity Plutocracy,” John McWhorter
• “Getting Your Priorities Straight,” Unfogged
• “A Peculiarly Bifurcated Book,” University Diaries
• “Benn There, Done That,” Discriminations
• “Colorblinded," The Boston Globe, September 3, 2006
• “Against Zero-Sum Logic: A Response to ["Plots Against America"]," Michael Rothberg, American Literary History 18.2 (2006) [PM]

Articles by Michaels concerning The Shape of the Signifier:

• “The Shape of the Signifier,” Critical Inquiry 27.2 (2001) [JSTOR]
• “Posthistoricism," Transition 70 (1996) [JSTOR]
• “Political Science Fictions,” New Literary History 31.4 (2000) [PM]
• “Empires of the Senseless: (The Response to) Terror and (the End of) History,” Radical History Review 85 (2003) [PM]

Commentary on The Shape of the Signifier:

• “The Shape of the Signifier or, The Ontology of Argument,” Davide Panagia, Theory & Event 8.2 (2005) [PM]
• “Post Post-Identity,” Michael Millner, American Quarterly 57.2 (2005) [PM]
• “Review," Henry Staten, Modernism/Modernity 12.2 (2005) [PM]

Articles by Michaels concerning Our America:

• “American Modernism and the Poetics of Identity,”  Modernism/Modernity 1.1 (1994) [PM]
• “Race Into Culture: A Critical Genealogy of Cultural Identity,” Critical Inquiry 18.4 (1992) [JSTOR]
• “The No-Drop Rule,” Critical Inquiry 20.4 (1994) [JSTOR]
• “The Vanishing American,” American Literary History 2.2 (1990) [JSTOR]

Commentary on Our America:

• “Introduction to Our America and Nativist Modernism: A Panel,” Robert Von Hallberg, Modernism/Modernity 3.1 (1996) [PM]
• “Modernism Without the Modernists,” Marjorie Perloff, Modernism/Modernity 3.1 (1996) [PM]
• “Whose America is Our America,” Charles Altieri, Modernism/Modernity 3.1 (1996) [PM]
• “Literature and History: Neat Fits,” Robert Von Hallberg, Modernism/Modernity 3.1 (1996) [PM]
• “Response," Walter Benn Michaels, Modernism/Modernity 3.1 (1996) [PM]

I would’ve included more on these lists, but I feared overwhelming contributors and commenters alike.  By no means must you read all those links—many of which are available only through subscription—to comment on The Trouble With Diversity.

Comments

[Brandon]

This may or may not be relevant to your discussion on The Valve and you may have already seen it anyway, but (what I think is) an excerpt from TTWD was published in this week's New York Time's Magazine, right here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/magazine/01wwln_essay.html

[David R. Block]

Well, blast. No access to Muse or JSTOR, either. What's a fellow to do??