Abstract
In this thesis I look at how the revitalization of the republican intellectual tradition since the late 1960´s, and its narrative of the free, political and civil life in the well-ordered republic, enter into American political culture. To do so I look at two texts by, Christopher Lasch and Wendell Berry, and argue that their cultural critiques serve a dual purpose: the revival of a populist element within the republican narrative and subsequently its application in a critique of the liberal foundation of modern American culture. The investigation and analysis of the thesis revolves around a narrative theory of culture, which sees culture as involving an ongoing argumentative conversation where the interpretation and sequence of events are ordered into larger narratives that in turn are used as the primary means of communication. Lasch and Berry enter into this American cultural conversation through their use of the republican narrative, and utilize it to identify a crisis within the narrative of the predominate liberal tradition. I argue that they show how the republican narrative can be used as a way of pointing out, that a crisis of modern American culture cannot be separated from a crisis in its liberal tradition, which from the Progressive Era has provided the dominant way of interpreting and sequencing events in the American cultural conversation.