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Final Words…. Reflections on American Literature and Culture. What we have done…. To wrap up our spring quarter (and, arguably, our whole year in TSenglish) I wanted to take a moment to reflect on “what we have done.” What have we covered? English as a Discipline What have we learned?
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Final Words… Reflections on American Literature and Culture
What we have done… • To wrap up our spring quarter (and, arguably, our whole year in TSenglish) I wanted to take a moment to reflect on “what we have done.” • What have we covered? • English as a Discipline • What have we learned? • The Problem of Essentialism • The Problem of Exceptionalism • The Problem of Narrative
English as a Discipline • Our inquiry this quarter has been framed by the work in a particular interdisciplinary sub-field within the English Dept, American Cultural Studies, which draws on: • Critical Theory • Literary Theory/History • Political Theory/History • Feminism • Marxism • Critical Race Studies • Ethnic Studies/History
English as a Discipline • The Larger Field of English includes: • Medieval, Early Modern, Enlightenment (18th C), Romantic, Victorian, Modernist, Postmodernist Studies • Poetics, The Novel, Drama Studies • Law and Literature • Ecocriticism • Film Studies • Popular Culture Studies • Rhetoric and Composition Studies • Science and Technology Studies • Digital Humanities • Textual Studies • Creative Writing
English as a Discipline • In other words we have only scratched the surface of possible questions and lines of inquiry in the English Department. • What kinds of broad claims can we make about the relationship between culture and nationalism at the end of this investigation? • Let’s return to the course questions…
Course Questions • What is the history of U.S. nationalism and what are the topics/issues that are crucial to that history? What are the ramifications of arguing that nationalism is historical and produced through social processes? • What role has literature and the sphere of culture played in this history? In what ways have literary texts participated in the historical production of national consciousness? Conversely, in what ways have historical forms of nationalism influenced or played a role in the production of literary texts?
I. The Problem of Essentialism What is the history of U.S. nationalism and what are the topics/issues that are crucial to that history? What are the ramifications of arguing that nationalism is historical and produced through social processes? “…nation-ness, as well as nationalism, are cultural artifacts of a particular kind. To understand them properly we needto consider carefully how they have come into historical being,in what ways their meanings have changed over time, andwhy, today, they command such a profound emotional legitimacy.” – Benedict Anderson
I. The Problem of Essentialism • Bad Assumptions • there is a continuous and relatively stable “essence,” meaning or origin which is the shared core of national identity • nationalism is a straightforward and “natural” phenomenon – instead of as a project that is defined by historical conflict and contestation • Even an incomplete sampling of nationalist thought and imagery in an American tradition clearly illustrates that - rather than a single “shared core” – the imagined community of nation has little in the way of historical continuity. • Instead, what we see is a history littered with contemporaneous, differing and, in some cases, ultimately contradictorily imagined communities.
II. The Problem of Exceptionalism What are the ramifications of arguing that nationalism is historical and produced through social processes? “…the search was on, so to speak, for a new way of linking fraternity, power and time meaningfully together.” - Benedict Anderson
II. The Problem of Exceptionalism • Bad Assumption: • Understanding national identity can be achieved by defining what makes the U.S. special, “exceptional” or especially unique on the stage of modern world history and its events • Critique reveals that each supposedly stable vision of shared national identity emerges, not out of a historically verifiable “essence,” but out of significant conflict and questioning. • What is the role of women in popular democracy? How are immigrants and slaves to be incorporated into the national body? Are the poor and uneducated qualified for self government? How is the U.S. to conduct itself in relation to other nations/other peoples?
II. The Problem of Exceptionalism • Looking to the cultural history suggests that these questions are not “incidental” to national identity, but constitutive of how that identity is imagined in the first place! • Certainly there is a significant tradition in which nationalism answers these questions in the name of patriarchy, white supremacy, or imperial dominance. • But nationalism can also be a malleable and un-essentialized means of “imagining” our connections to others in a resistant or radical way.
III. The Problem of Narrative What role has literature and the sphere of culture played in this history? In what ways have literary texts participated in the historical production of national consciousness? Conversely, in what ways have historical forms of nationalism influenced or played a role in the production of literary texts? “All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives.” - Benedict Anderson
III. The Problem of Narrative • Watt: The novel has as its epistemological base, the ideological structures of the Enlightenment: empiricism and liberal individualism. • Belsey: The “classic realist narrative” – in its illusionism, hierarchy of voices, and closure – is a vehicle for interpellating persons into ideology. • Anderson: The novel’s basic structures produce a consciousness of linear, homogenous time, simultaneity, and representativeness, which allows reading publics to imagine themselves as a part of national communities.
III. The Problem of Narrative • Bad Assumption: • National literature itself only ever “reflects” a people which can be said to exist in “reality” and outside of representation. • Everywhere that we encounter nation, we encounter narratives:revolutionary origin-stories, boot-strap narratives, frontier narratives, narratives of modern progress, social evolution narratives, religious freedom narratives, immigration narratives, domestic narratives, melting-pot narratives… the list goes on • Rather than “reflecting” experience, these narratives mediate experience and provide (ideological) structure which seems to point to the self-evidence of their claims.
III. The Problem of Narrative • The conflicted history of this production suggests that “nation” not only needs to be “narrated” but that it also requires constant re-narration, re-representation, re-imagination as historical conditions continually put pressure on the supposedly self-evident “us” of imagined community. • As both Anderson and Derrida suggest, “the people” of national community are produced through ongoing logics of representation – Imagination is a social act!
Final Thoughts • Literature (and culture, more generally) is a site of struggle! • An American Cultural Studies perspective calls on us to understand how our social life is constantly mediated by stories and narrativesthat have political and material consequences. • Most generally, this approach asks us to understand culture and cultural production as a vital social and political act.
Final Thoughts • Narratives/representations “do” something – they “produce” identities/subjects, legitimate power and violence, resist dominant ideologies, re-imagine conflicts, critique values and assumptions, discipline and define individuals, limit options for political struggle, counter historical knowledge projects • Rather than understanding art/literature/pop culture as somehow separate from social concerns (in the realm of mere entertainment or high reflection) we can see how it is politically invested and an important part of social processes.
Final Thoughts Power in culture is the ability to… • Discipline populations by defining right/wrong or normal/abnormal behaviors and relations • Disseminate and legitimate values as universal social or political norms • Limit the possibilities for imagining alternative social organizations and identities Resistance in culture often… • Imagines new, alternative social relationships or forms of association • Challenges the terms upon which social identities have been historically constructed • Exposes the limits or contradictions of dominant forms of social imagination and power
Final Thoughts? • What are the salient social or political questions that face you in this contemporary moment? • What would you look at to illuminate these problematics from a cultural perspective?
