The Claims of Experience

Autobiography, from Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life to J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, has long been a popular genre that both authors and readers have utilized to understand particular political moments. As this book argues, such narratives have also contributed to the development of American political thought, despite the fact that the field has not taken autobiography seriously as political theory in its own right. This book considersthe political contexts in which Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Henry Adams, Emma Goldman, and Whittaker Chambers wrote their autobiographies to better understand not only the political problems to which autobiographical works can be a solution, but the broader appeal of such claims of experience to the everydaylife of democratic politics.