Fallen subjects: American pragmatism and the color line, 1880--1920

With his 1890 publication of The Principles of Psychology , William James made subjectivity a viable object of study. With clinical precision, he presented a thinking, feeling subject that is fluid rather than fixed, a model of the self that is continuous with its past yet characterized by a future-oriented process of becoming. He turned to science to observe and describe this model, and the philosophy he named pragmatism would emerge from it. This dissertation examines this model of the self as it travels from one discourse to another, tracing its links to contemporaneous theories of race. It has three primary objectives, which are intertwined throughout: (1) historicizing the rise of pragmatism, I uncover its appropriation of late-nineteenth-century theories of race and nation; (2) examining the philosophical tenets of pragmatism in relation to this appropriation, I expose the role of fantasy and imagination within the operational practice of pragmatism; (3) comparing the imaginative work inherent in pragmatist philosophy with the narrative practices of Henry James and W.E.B. Du Bois, I illuminate these writers' depiction of an alternative model of the self that arose from yet nonetheless challenged that of pragmatism.