Book Review: The Claims of Experience: Autobiography and American Democracy, by Nolan Bennett

• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Author: Adam Dahl
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591720907553
• Date: 01 August 2020
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews
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all Blacks were blameworthy as a group and thus targeted violence was
unnecessary—any Black person’s property could be destroyed and any
Black person could be tortured, raped, or murdered.
While some arguments may thus support dangerous agendas, Delmas has
given us a stimulating book that goes far beyond the standard justifications
for civil disobedience and that describes a far more engaged and morally
responsible citizenry. For that reason alone, it should be read widely.
Note
1. See, for instance, Christopher H. Wellman, “Samaritanism and the duty to obey
the law,” in Is there a duty to obey the law?, eds. Christopher H. Wellman and A.
John Simmons (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 3–89.
The Claims of Experience: Autobiography and American Democracy, by Nolan Bennett.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, 276 pp.
Reviewed by: Adam Dahl, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA
DOI: 10.1177/0090591720907553
Nolan Bennett’s The Claims of Experience: Autobiography and American
Democracy is an original, beautifully written, and sophisticated account of
how autobiography represents a distinct genre of political theory that holds
the power to recreate political community through personal life writing. At a
time when political theorists are turning increasing attention to questions of
genre–how the form of political writing importantly shapes its content—
Bennett successfully illustrates through a series of five chapters how personal
narrative is not simply an individualistic act. Rather, he argues that life writ-
ing is a potent and patterned form of political argument aimed at reconstitut-
ing the collectivity. In this way, Bennett shows how the autobiographical “I”
often becomes a vehicle for contesting and redrawing the boundaries of “We,
the people.” Bennett explores these dynamics through a series of chapters on
exemplary autobiographical works in American literature from Benjamin
Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Henry Adams, Emma Goldman, and Whittaker
Chambers. What is particularly notable in Bennett’s style of interpretation is
the empathy he brings to the authors he studies, who span a vast range of
ideological and political commitments. Through empathic reading, Bennett
suspends judgment and instead seeks to appreciate and understand the intent

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of authors who made a conscious choice to turn to autobiography for the sake
of political argument.
The central analytic device of Bennett’s project is what he calls a “claim of
experience,” a distinct kind of political claim that challenges authoritative
interpretations of one’s personal experiences with the aim of cultivating narra-
tive solidarity with popular audiences. Claims of experience offer to these
audiences visions of “new community by restoring to readers and author alike
from prevailing political authorities the power to remake and make meaning
of their lives” (3). When successful, these claims not only redistribute political
authority but also recreate new visions of democratic community. In doing so,
claims of experience move in three distinct directions. First, they move upward
in seizing interpretive authority over the meaning of one’s life from a variety
of different sources, whether they be other biographers, parental figures, sla-
veowners, state officials, political leaders, or even other social movements.
Second, they move inward to show how these authorities have shaped per-
sonal experience. Third,...