Introduction -- Part One. A Critical Theory of Exemplarity and Judgment -- 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

"The romantic vision of the civil rights movement is exhausted, and its inverse, Afro-Pessimism, offers a self-defeating irony. To resolve this impasse, Brandon Terry transforms the standard story of America's democratic awakening through a tragic reading of the civil rights movement: as an ongoing struggle still worthy of affirmation."-- Provided by publisher