After the heavy saturation of blues performing in the 1920s and the application of various elements– rhythm, syncopation, call and response, lyrics, and so on– to avant-garde literature, Black and white, of the time, the country descended into a prolonged Depression in the 1930s. Blues recording ground nearly to a halt for several years, though conditions that fed into the blues were in ample supply. The music was changing with the amalgamation of swing band elements and boogie-woogie with the rural blues, producing a jumping hybrid that used blues structures and lyrics with a big-band lilt. The move to the Left, especially in the artistic community, found literary blues having a decidedly Leftist feel in writers such as Langston Hughes, holding over from the twenties and Frank Marshall Davis emerging in the thirties. There were still the musical artists from various genres, including classical, who made use of the blues, and movies, for example, reflected the music as well. It was a new kind of hot music– and thus, hot music literature– that was in the offing.

The chapter considers how the Polish Government in Exile sought to exert influence on various civil society organisations in order to advance understanding of the situation of Poland under occupation and to encourage such organisations to support calls for retaliation and post-war justice. It examines the Polish engagement with women’s organisations, the Churches, the broad Left, and legal/political organisations. It is argued that the Polish Government in Exile attempted to shape the wider discursive environment in a manner favouring Polish policy but faced a number of challenges, including the counter-discourses promoted by different actors.

Rorty’s liberalism strays so far from its classical form that one might wonder why we cluster him together with thinkers such as Locke, Kant, or even more recent writers such as Rawls. Clarifying the particulars of Rorty’s political philosophy – his particular liberalism – requires one to enter into a set debates about metaphysics, epistemology, and social thought that go beyond liberalism, veering into literary criticism, critical theory, and Marxism. This chapter begins by laying out the contours of Rorty’s political commitments, beginning with how they first came together in what he calls his “postmodernist bourgeois liberalism.” It then shows how his liberalism finds its fullest expression in the “ideally liberal society” set out in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. It goes on to examine how, in subsequent work, Rorty revised his description of that society in response to criticisms from feminist theorists. It concludes that his later writings indicate that Rorty’s position is potentially more radical than he, or his readers, recognize.