Jack Turner Speaks on Walt Whitman’s Existential Democracy

Jack Turner, Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, will give a talk with the title “Die Your Own Death: Walt Whitman’s Existential Democracy.”

The talk will take place on October 2, 2024, from 4-5:30pm in the GLC Multipurpose Room of the Graduate Life Center.

The talk is tailored to appeal to both faculty and students, with plenty of time for discussion and interaction with the guest speaker. The talk will be followed by a public reception. You are cordially invited to attend.

Here is the abstract of the talk: This presentation will be the introduction to my book in progress, Die Your Own Death: Walt Whitman’s Existential Democracy. The book explores Whitman’s suggestion that democracy justifies itself not only by honoring human dignity and equality, but also by teaching citizens “how to die their own deaths,” how to embrace their own limitation and mortality without relying on a transcendent god. Whitman’s suggestion of this existential justification for democracy distinguishes him as a political theorist: no one before him made this argument. At the same time, Whitman’s own mortal limitations — his fear of posthumous literary obscurity, his horror at the mass death of the U.S. Civil War, his white supremacy — caused him to waiver in his radical philosophical acceptance of mortality. During and after the Civil War, Whitman experimented with nationalist conceptions of immortality: the idea that democratic selves could live forever by merging their identities with that of the immortal nation. This nationalist defense against death diluted Whitman’s philosophical radicalism and opened him to both racist and imperialist visions of American immortality that betrayed his democratic commitments. Die Your Own Death thus traces the rise and fall of a radical democratic philosophy over Whitman’s career.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact ppe@nullvt.edu at least ten business days before the event.

Photos by Holly Belcher for Virginia Tech.