ABSTRACT
This chapter is divided into three parts. In the first part, the author advances the argument that one cannot fully understand how pragmatism and humanism are linked when one ignores the relationship between Romanticism and pragmatism. It is with the Romantics that the modern antifoundationalist story of progress starts. The second part analyzes the relationship between Marxism and humanism. Pragmatism is dominated by the humanist idea that poetic agency is the locus of human uniqueness, originality, and dignity, and the same can be said about Marxism. When one poses the question of whether the idea that creative human agency shapes our world really is central to Marx’s historical materialism, the answer has to focus on the notion of aesthetic emancipation and thus on the suggestion that artistic creativity must not be separated from other forms of human production. In the final part, the author uses his discussion of the link between pragmatism and Marxism in order to illuminate the importance of the figure of the black aesthete. This continues his analysis of the female black dandy in Larsen’s Quicksand. He contends that the work of the black aesthete ought to be seen as one of the most stimulating answers to the complex question of what might result from the attempt to establish a dialogue between pragmatism and Marxism.
