Shattered dreams, infinite hope: a tragic vision of the civil rights movement

Introduction

Part one: A critical theory of exemplarity, judgment, and narrative. On exemplarity and disclosure: The experience of exemplarity

Between aesthetics and history: Kant and the problem of judgment

The defeated cause: judgment, history, and narrative

Part two: Romance. The romance of civil rights: from Red Sea to ruins

The tangible ruins of our present: the crisis of authority in Black political life

Beyond silence and romance: Rawls, Mills, and the tasks of political philosophy and critique

Part three: After romance. The changing same: ironic history and its politics in African American critical thought

The tragic vision: the meaning of long civil rights movement history

Conclusion.