Radical Relevance

Book excerpt: Exemplifies the struggles of scholars to work toward a more shared agenda for social change. In an effort to rethink the left, this interdisciplinary collection weaves together some of today’s most powerful voices in contemporary left critical thought as they examine the fragmentation of American movements for social change, evaluate what critical scholarship might contribute to the task of renewing (or creating) a more unified and efficacious left, and explore the left’s possibly inadequate dealings with many marginalized groups. Representing a diverse range of theoretical perspectives within several “textual” disciplines, the essays assess historical, practical, or speculative models for a “whole left”—a left constituted by a broad range of complexly interwoven interests, including issues of class, environment, gender, sexuality, disability, race, and ethnicity. The book exemplifies the struggles of scholars to work toward a more shared agenda for social change. At Northern Arizona University, Laura Gray-Rosendale and Steven Rosendale are Associate Professors of English. Gray-Rosendale is the coeditor (with Gil Harootunian) of Fractured Feminisms: Rhetoric, Context, and Contestation and the coeditor (with Sibylle Gruber) of Alternative Rhetorics: Challenges to the Rhetorical Tradition, both also published by SUNY Press. Rosendale is the editor of The Greening of Literary Scholarship: Literature, Theory, and the Environment.