"Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan": Democratic Theory, Populism, and Philip Roth's "American Trilogy"
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Populism, as both ideology and social movement, is nearly a universal, albeit sporadic, feature of all modern democratic political systems. Populism is also arguably the only example of an indigenous radical mass movement in America and, after the discredited state of socialism, the only continuing source of democratic protest. Yet populism does not enjoy a central place in democratic theory. In fact, many writers contend that when populism arises, it has a destabilizing effect on democratic regimes. Even when others attempt to credit populism, they acknowledge the existence of significant negative features. This essay reviews the contested status of populism and suggests a greater appreciation of its positive contribution to democratic theory can be reached through an analysis of Philip Roth's "American Trilogy." Like Roth, students of populism place their assessments in the context of historical narratives. Thus, Roth's fictional recreations of post-war America can be compared to the analyses of "populist moments" in America as analyzed by both populist critics and defenders. Unlike most democratic theorists, however, Roth is willing to explore the nature and source of populist anger and its related expressions, and thus to expose its poignant dimensions. By appending Roth's insights, it is possible to ameliorate populism's contested status in democratic theory by acknowledging the positive role of emotion, properly understood, in political protest. Le populisme, en tant qu'idéologie et mouvement social, est presque une caractéristique universelle, quoique sporadique, de tous les systèmes politiques démocratiques modernes. Malgré cela, le populisme n'occupe pas une place centrale dans la théorie démocratique. En effet, bon nombre d'écrivains sont d'avis que, lorsque le populisme fait surface, il a un effet déstabilisateur sur les régimes démocratiques. Le présent essai jette un coup d'oeil sur l'état contesté du populisme et suggère qu'il est possible de mieux apprécier sa contribution positive à la théorie démocratique par le truchement d'une analyse du livre de Philip Roth « American Trilogy ».
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.028 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".