Musically, Tannhauser is my favorite of Wagner’s early operas. The theme of liberation that is clear in The Flying Dutchman is here as well but it is more contested by what strikes me as repressive strains. When I listen to this opera I get the sense that Tannhauser spends most of the time under the thumb of external authorities. Yet, it is those moments when he grasps his freedom that are the most memorable.
Conventionally, this opera explores the dilemma between sacred love and profane love, represented by Venus and Elisabeth It is to exemplify this dilemma that Zizek argued that the two should be played by the singer. Tannhauser begins in Venusburg enjoying a life of sensual pleasures but soon pleads with Venus to be allowed to leave to return to the human world. When he returns, Tannhauser runs into some old friends who immediately take him to a song contest. During a banter about the meaning of love, Tannhauser loses it and exposes where he has been – with Venus, getting loved up. He is condemned by his buddies and told to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. Maybe the Pope can redeem him. The journey is a failure but the death of Elisabeth redeems him and Tannhauser is able to die saved.
At the start Tannhauser is in the opposite position as the spinning women and sailors in The Flying Dutchman. While they are being lorded over by the burdens of a labor regimen and their bosses and seek (and achieve) momentary escape through pleasure, Tannhauser is being overwhelmed with the sensual pleasure and seeks a return to the toil of human life. Venus, in her attempts, to keep Tannhauser in Venusburg articulated the sufferings he will face if he returns. Venus leaves the door open for him but even at the moment of his death when he faced damnation, he did not return. For Wagner, I suppose this represents the triumph of sacred love.
I am less offended by this part of the story. Tannhauser expressed his desires by leaving Venusburg and refusing to return. Yet, this is only accomplished through a very clear act of repression on his part. I would ask students listening to this opera: should Tannhauser have repressed these desires? Should the choice have been either/or?
What does offend me a bit is Tannhauser’s groveling to the demands of his fair-weather friends and his begging for redemption from the Pope (although in defense of the religious theme of this opera, the pilgrim’s song is one of the most beautiful moments in the opera).
I want to look behind Tannhauser’s self-restrain and boot-licking and point out those moments of unrestrained passion and boldness on his part. It seems clear to me that he has the potential to live and entirely liberated life. Although not seen or described on stage, Tannhauser turned on his life and moved to Venusburg. This was clearly an expression of his desires and will. There are also two moments on stage (sung to the same leitmotif), where he expresses his deepest desires to those who have power over him. When he articulates his thanks to Venus but also asks her to let him go and during the contest when he flustered by the lame definitions of love her heard by his comrades, he bolts out, in the most striking phrase in the opera, that one cannot understand love until one experienced Venusburg. His offended friends than send him to the Pope. This, of course, sets of the action of the third act, which strikes me as an endless series of external and internal repression and the before-mentioned boot-licking.
Despite this, I need to stand by my initial point of view. Unlike the spinning women and sailors in The Flying Dutchman Tannhauser cannot blame his bosses for his suffering. He is complicit in his repression (that may indeed be his will). In addition to himself, we can identify four major forces confining Tannhauser’s actions. What breaks my heart is that he showed his ability to kick off all of these forces at various times and in various ways.
1. The Goddess Venus, who never leaves him alone until his death.
2. The rules of polite society that make it impossible for him to tell his comrades where he has been and reject the entire philosophical foundation of Venusburg.
3. Religious authority, represented by the Pope and the pilgrims, to whom Tannhauser spends the last third of the opera accepting as master.
4. His loyalty to his friends is also part of his undoing. After he breaks the rules of polite society to express his feelings of joy in recalling Venusburg, he almost immediately falls back on the authority of his buddies.
How pathetic.
In The Root is Man, Dwight Macdonald wrote: “It is not difficult to sketch out the kind of society we need to rescue modern man from his present alienation. It would be one whose only aim, justification and principle would be the full development of each individual, and the removal of all social bars to his complete and immediate satisfaction in his work, his leisure, his sex life and all other aspects of his nature. . . . .All ideologies which require the sacrifice of the present in favour of the future will be looked on with suspicion. People should be happy and should satisfy their spontaneous needs here and now. If people don’t enjoy what they are doing, they shouldn’t do it.”
Monday, July 27, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
LOA: Tocqueville, Democracy in America
This is my first post since arriving in Taiwan. I attended a conference last week and have had little time to work on this blog.
As far as I know, Alexis de Tocqueville is the only writer who has an entire volume in the Library of America, but who never became an American (legally or via personal identity). One could not imagine the exclusion of Democracy in America from the collection.
I found this edition of Tocqueville at the book exhibit at the conference. It was on sale for $10.00. Having given my old copy to a promising student, I took advantage of the deal. I think it was a good decision. When I am abroad I find I think much more about the meaning of being an American and throughout my studies I have found no writer with more rich insights into this question than Tocqueville.
While re-reading Democracy in America, I could not help but wonder why the History Channel wastes so much time on Nostradamus. The predictive qualities of Tocqueville are immensely more interesting and are actually grounded in real history.
As most of you know, Tocqueville came to the United States in 1830 to study prisons but would spend the next ten years writing Democracy in America to come to terms with his observations of a social he saw as defined fundamentally by its "equality of conditions." (We need only make the obvious point that he was referring to white men, although he did have separate sections exploring enslaved men and women, white women, and Amerindians. None of these groups were included within American democracy at the time, either in reality or in Tocqueville's analysis.)
My intention was to read Tocqueville to explore who early nineteenth century Euro-Americans looked at the non-Western world. I could certainly have developed this question but I will instead simply identify some interesting passages that have contemporary relevance.
On the New England town:
"Yet it is at the local level that the strength of a free people lies. Local institutions are to liberty what elementary schools are to knowledge; they bring it within reach of the people, allow them to savor its peaceful use, and accustom them to rely on it."
On the formation of an industrial working class:
"As the principle of division of labor is more thoroughly applied, the worker becomes weaker, more limited, and more dependent. The art progresses, the artisan regresses. Furthermore, as the scale of manufacturing and capital investment increases, products improve and become cheaper, and as people begin to realize this, very wealthy and very enlightened men move in to exploit industries that had previously been left to ignorant or hard-pressed artisans. These men are attracted by the magnitude of the effort required and the immensity of the result to be obtained. Thus as industrial science steadily debases the class of workers, it raises the class or masters."
On the same issue:
"Nevertheless, friends of democracy must keep an anxious eye peeled in this direction at all times. For if permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy are ever to appear in the world anew, it is safe to predict that this is the gate by which they will enter."
What would be wrong with that? Well first:
"Equality of conditions makes men aware of their independence but at the same time points up their weakness. They are free but vulnerable to a thousand accidents, and experience is not slow to teach them that although they do not usually need the help of others, they will almost inevitably come a time when they cannot do without it."
Here we can direct out attention to later nineteenth century evolutionary thinking. Mutual aid, for Kropotkin was part of our revolutionary heritage, not a particular form of empathy that emerges from a specific social arrangement.
I want to end this with one last passage that struck me during this reading of Tocqueville. This one regards the impact of the employee-employer relationship in the context of the "equality of conditions."
"Obedience then loses its moral standing in the eyes of the person who obeys. He no longer sees it as an obligation that is in some sense divine, and he does not yet see it under its purely human aspect. In his eyes it is neither holy nor just, and he submits to it as a degrading utilitarian reality. . . . We then see in each citizen's home something analogous to the sad spectacle we behold in political society. Unremitting intestine warfare pits two suspicious rival powers against each other in smoldering conflict. The master is malevolent and mild, the servant malevolent and intractable. One is forever seeking by ignoble subterfuge to evade his obligation to protect and remunerate, while the other shirks his duty to obey. Each tries to seize the reins of domestic administration, which lie dangling loose somewhere between them. The lines that divide authority from tyranny, liberty from licensee, and right from fact strike them as jumbled and confused, and no one knows precisely what he is or what he can do or what should do. Such a state is not democratic, but revolutionary."
These are not very important insights but it strikes me that Tocqueville identifies a sharp dilemma between industrial society and American democracy. The United States, as far as I am concerned, has not yet resolved this.
As far as I know, Alexis de Tocqueville is the only writer who has an entire volume in the Library of America, but who never became an American (legally or via personal identity). One could not imagine the exclusion of Democracy in America from the collection.
I found this edition of Tocqueville at the book exhibit at the conference. It was on sale for $10.00. Having given my old copy to a promising student, I took advantage of the deal. I think it was a good decision. When I am abroad I find I think much more about the meaning of being an American and throughout my studies I have found no writer with more rich insights into this question than Tocqueville.
While re-reading Democracy in America, I could not help but wonder why the History Channel wastes so much time on Nostradamus. The predictive qualities of Tocqueville are immensely more interesting and are actually grounded in real history.
As most of you know, Tocqueville came to the United States in 1830 to study prisons but would spend the next ten years writing Democracy in America to come to terms with his observations of a social he saw as defined fundamentally by its "equality of conditions." (We need only make the obvious point that he was referring to white men, although he did have separate sections exploring enslaved men and women, white women, and Amerindians. None of these groups were included within American democracy at the time, either in reality or in Tocqueville's analysis.)
My intention was to read Tocqueville to explore who early nineteenth century Euro-Americans looked at the non-Western world. I could certainly have developed this question but I will instead simply identify some interesting passages that have contemporary relevance.
On the New England town:
"Yet it is at the local level that the strength of a free people lies. Local institutions are to liberty what elementary schools are to knowledge; they bring it within reach of the people, allow them to savor its peaceful use, and accustom them to rely on it."
On the formation of an industrial working class:
"As the principle of division of labor is more thoroughly applied, the worker becomes weaker, more limited, and more dependent. The art progresses, the artisan regresses. Furthermore, as the scale of manufacturing and capital investment increases, products improve and become cheaper, and as people begin to realize this, very wealthy and very enlightened men move in to exploit industries that had previously been left to ignorant or hard-pressed artisans. These men are attracted by the magnitude of the effort required and the immensity of the result to be obtained. Thus as industrial science steadily debases the class of workers, it raises the class or masters."
On the same issue:
"Nevertheless, friends of democracy must keep an anxious eye peeled in this direction at all times. For if permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy are ever to appear in the world anew, it is safe to predict that this is the gate by which they will enter."
What would be wrong with that? Well first:
"Equality of conditions makes men aware of their independence but at the same time points up their weakness. They are free but vulnerable to a thousand accidents, and experience is not slow to teach them that although they do not usually need the help of others, they will almost inevitably come a time when they cannot do without it."
Here we can direct out attention to later nineteenth century evolutionary thinking. Mutual aid, for Kropotkin was part of our revolutionary heritage, not a particular form of empathy that emerges from a specific social arrangement.
I want to end this with one last passage that struck me during this reading of Tocqueville. This one regards the impact of the employee-employer relationship in the context of the "equality of conditions."
"Obedience then loses its moral standing in the eyes of the person who obeys. He no longer sees it as an obligation that is in some sense divine, and he does not yet see it under its purely human aspect. In his eyes it is neither holy nor just, and he submits to it as a degrading utilitarian reality. . . . We then see in each citizen's home something analogous to the sad spectacle we behold in political society. Unremitting intestine warfare pits two suspicious rival powers against each other in smoldering conflict. The master is malevolent and mild, the servant malevolent and intractable. One is forever seeking by ignoble subterfuge to evade his obligation to protect and remunerate, while the other shirks his duty to obey. Each tries to seize the reins of domestic administration, which lie dangling loose somewhere between them. The lines that divide authority from tyranny, liberty from licensee, and right from fact strike them as jumbled and confused, and no one knows precisely what he is or what he can do or what should do. Such a state is not democratic, but revolutionary."
These are not very important insights but it strikes me that Tocqueville identifies a sharp dilemma between industrial society and American democracy. The United States, as far as I am concerned, has not yet resolved this.
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Flying Dutchman
Der fliegende Holländer (1843)
I am not sure why some listeners have been intimidated from listening to Richard Wagner's work. While at Northeastern Beachfront Professional College I was scolded by an otherwise supportive faculty member for even considering a course on the Ring Cycle and she was a self-described opera lover. She said it was too "orchestral," whatever that means. I wonder if that was code for "too German"; I seem to recall some Puccini in the background during this conversation and he used an orchestra too. William Berger called his book "Wagner without Fear." I certainly commend his sentiment but I am still baffled at why people were fearful in the first place. I have always found his work accessible, exhilarating and refreshing, not matter how many times I worked through his works while commuting to Northeastern Beachfront Professional College. It certainly never made me cower, hide under my bed, or piss myself.
Der fliegende Holländer was the first Wagner opera I purchased. I had already been exposed to the Ring Cycle and had completed my study of it when I began my work on maritime history. I looking into Der fliegende Holländer with the belief that I might find something pithy to include in my writing.
The tale is simple enough. The Dutchman and his crew is condemned to wander the sea until he can be redeemed by the love of a women. The catch is that he can only come to land every seven years. Conveniently for our bladders that moment is about when the opera starts, which is why this particular music drama can be performed in less than four hours. Thankfully, for the Dutchman, Senta has already heard of him and has a bit of a crush. She also happens to be the daughter of the captain of a merchant vessel that just bumped into the Dutchman and his crew. Senta and the Dutchman get together at the end of the second act. This annoys her old beau, Erik, who scorns her for pledging herself to this strange (and probably quite ripe sailor). The Dutchman leaves shattered but Senta proves her love for the Dutchman through suicide. Up to heaven the Dutchman and his crew go. Actually not so different from the last two "Pirates" movies, although I still suggest the opera even though it lacks pirates (who I will blog about in the future).
When Wagner composed this he had not yet developed his complete vision for opera and there are still many old habits derived from operatic convention. Nevertheless, Der fliegende Holländer is immediately recognizable as unique. Each of Wagner's works is unique with a unique sound. Here are some of the highlights. Although I would not recommend listening to highlights of Wagner. Posting the entire opera really does not work in this medium.
The Prelude
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqezCR_XzaI
Leitmotivs are obviously here already. All of these sounds will be repeated through out the work.
Senta's Ballad -- When she tells the story of the Dutchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qSsfn3rE6M
The main point I want to make about Wagner in this series of blog entries is that his work at the root as a libertarian message that is lacking in the work of most other opera composers. It is a constant message in Wagner's work and far overshadows any other theme.
1. The Dutchman is enslaved by Satan, as is his crew. The opera ends with their liberation.
2. Senta liberates herself from both her old vows to Erik and from the labor regime that surrounds her. Her "ballad" breaks up the labor of working women, despite the protests of the boss, who it seems is annoyed as much by the work stoppage as by the gossip. This is much like how Beckmesser's singing breaks up the work of Sachs in "Die Meistersinger." I like to think that women in nineteenth century Norway took many such unwelcome breaks during their working days.
3. The third act begins with another break in the work regime of the ship, as the ship crews have a party with the spinning women in attendance. Wagner's next opera will work in the opposite direction as Tannhauser attempts to liberate himself from the party, but the continuity of themes are there, as I will discuss next week.
I am not sure why some listeners have been intimidated from listening to Richard Wagner's work. While at Northeastern Beachfront Professional College I was scolded by an otherwise supportive faculty member for even considering a course on the Ring Cycle and she was a self-described opera lover. She said it was too "orchestral," whatever that means. I wonder if that was code for "too German"; I seem to recall some Puccini in the background during this conversation and he used an orchestra too. William Berger called his book "Wagner without Fear." I certainly commend his sentiment but I am still baffled at why people were fearful in the first place. I have always found his work accessible, exhilarating and refreshing, not matter how many times I worked through his works while commuting to Northeastern Beachfront Professional College. It certainly never made me cower, hide under my bed, or piss myself.
Der fliegende Holländer was the first Wagner opera I purchased. I had already been exposed to the Ring Cycle and had completed my study of it when I began my work on maritime history. I looking into Der fliegende Holländer with the belief that I might find something pithy to include in my writing.
The tale is simple enough. The Dutchman and his crew is condemned to wander the sea until he can be redeemed by the love of a women. The catch is that he can only come to land every seven years. Conveniently for our bladders that moment is about when the opera starts, which is why this particular music drama can be performed in less than four hours. Thankfully, for the Dutchman, Senta has already heard of him and has a bit of a crush. She also happens to be the daughter of the captain of a merchant vessel that just bumped into the Dutchman and his crew. Senta and the Dutchman get together at the end of the second act. This annoys her old beau, Erik, who scorns her for pledging herself to this strange (and probably quite ripe sailor). The Dutchman leaves shattered but Senta proves her love for the Dutchman through suicide. Up to heaven the Dutchman and his crew go. Actually not so different from the last two "Pirates" movies, although I still suggest the opera even though it lacks pirates (who I will blog about in the future).
When Wagner composed this he had not yet developed his complete vision for opera and there are still many old habits derived from operatic convention. Nevertheless, Der fliegende Holländer is immediately recognizable as unique. Each of Wagner's works is unique with a unique sound. Here are some of the highlights. Although I would not recommend listening to highlights of Wagner. Posting the entire opera really does not work in this medium.
The Prelude
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqezCR_XzaI
Leitmotivs are obviously here already. All of these sounds will be repeated through out the work.
Senta's Ballad -- When she tells the story of the Dutchman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qSsfn3rE6M
The main point I want to make about Wagner in this series of blog entries is that his work at the root as a libertarian message that is lacking in the work of most other opera composers. It is a constant message in Wagner's work and far overshadows any other theme.
1. The Dutchman is enslaved by Satan, as is his crew. The opera ends with their liberation.
2. Senta liberates herself from both her old vows to Erik and from the labor regime that surrounds her. Her "ballad" breaks up the labor of working women, despite the protests of the boss, who it seems is annoyed as much by the work stoppage as by the gossip. This is much like how Beckmesser's singing breaks up the work of Sachs in "Die Meistersinger." I like to think that women in nineteenth century Norway took many such unwelcome breaks during their working days.
3. The third act begins with another break in the work regime of the ship, as the ship crews have a party with the spinning women in attendance. Wagner's next opera will work in the opposite direction as Tannhauser attempts to liberate himself from the party, but the continuity of themes are there, as I will discuss next week.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
LOA: American Speeches
American Speeches: Political Oratory from the Revolution to the Civil War
Edited by Ted Widmer
American Speeches is one of the more recent publications by the Library of America. I had initially considered going more systematically through the series, being on the road means I am at the mercy of local library collections. Nevertheless, this is a good place to start.
I can imagine this collection working well in a U.S. survey class since is does such a good job of following the narrative generally presented to freshmen history students. I suppose this does not say much about the U.S. survey. Despite the title, most of the speeches Widmer collected focus on the sectional crisis and the Civil War. The Revolution is only briefly introduced through speeches by James Otis, Patrick Henry, and John Hancock. This is not the most diverse collection either. Only one Amerindian is represented. Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, and Sojourner Truth are included as African-American abolitionist voices. Women are more broadly represented (Frances Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Angelica Grimke, and Truth). These interesting speeches are dwarfed by around one hundred pages of Senate floor speeches on the 1850 Compromise. Since complaining about the selections in an anthology is about the lowest form of criticism, I will say no more about it. I only include this for those interested in exploring this collection. To his credit, Widmer did produce a volume that contains many of the important speeches of the era and thus could be a handy reference
Some of the most memorable selections are the briefest. Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech in Akron is always interesting as is John Brown’s defense and challenge to the court in 1859. To this list we could add the “Gettysburg Address,” which could not have been excised from the collection.
I went at these political speeches with the goal of extracted to what degree these figures engaged the world outside of the American republic. As expected, most political speeches elevated the American system of government and pointed out the particular historical mission of Americans. In 1825 Daniel Webster gave an address commemorating the Bunker Hill Monument. He certainly highlighted this view: "Let our object be, OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUNTRY. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid Monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty." The Revolutionary-era speeches, saw their struggle in more universal terms. They could not ignore that their struggle was taking place within an empire with a global reach. Yet, John Hancock, like Webster a half century later, saw Americans as unique. Unlike other people who "deserve to be enslaved" America "abounds in men who are superior to all temptation, whom nothing can divert from a steady pursuit of the interest of their country." So much for the struggle of American being the struggle of all mankind.
One way we can go at this is by remembering that the United States was born of an empire and was itself an empire at its birth. This point was not lost of Red Jacket, when he responded to George Washington in 1792. He was acutely aware that the settlement of the Revolutionary War meant the transfer of trans-Appalacian lands from one empire (the British) to another (the American.) He also points out that liberty is not unique to white Americans. "The President, in effect, observed to us that we of the Five Nations were our own proprietors -- were freemen, and might speak with freedom." In a very different context, Frances Wright extended the notion of liberty universally. Taking inspiration, she claims, from European notions of patriotism, she defined a patriot as a "lover of human liberty and human improvement" and "a useful member of the human family." She ends her July 4th speech: "So shall we rejoice to good purpose, and in good feeling; so shall we improve the victory once on this day achieved, until all mankind hold with us the jubilee of independence."
While Red Jacket pointed out that the Iroquois were victims of an imperial game, Ely Moore, in a speech to the General Trades' Union in 1833 pointed out who it was who actually build the empire. "Who were the pioneer of the West? What class of society prepared the way for the agriculturist, the merchant, and the professional man? Were they not artificers? Was not the forest made to bow before the stroke of the axe? . . . No country can be cleared and settled, nor colony founded, without the aid of the mechanic arts." I will only add that it is important that students of empire do not forget the willing and sometimes unwilling working class agents of empire. I will perhaps blog on Jack London in this regard in the future.
Theodore Parker narrowly avoids American exceptionalism by claiming that every group of people have a "peculiar genius or character which does not change, it has also an accordingly a particular work to perform in the economy of the world."
I could go on. Anti-slavery voices, well-represented in this volume, could not afford to ignore the global nature of slavery, yet some such as Henry Highland Garnet's speech in 1843, presented slavery as an American problem, ignoring the enslavement of Africans and African-Americans across the hemisphere. While American political speeches may not be the first place some would go to find a dialogue between the United States, its empire, and the world, I do think there is enough here to allow an investigation of this question.
Edited by Ted Widmer
American Speeches is one of the more recent publications by the Library of America. I had initially considered going more systematically through the series, being on the road means I am at the mercy of local library collections. Nevertheless, this is a good place to start.
I can imagine this collection working well in a U.S. survey class since is does such a good job of following the narrative generally presented to freshmen history students. I suppose this does not say much about the U.S. survey. Despite the title, most of the speeches Widmer collected focus on the sectional crisis and the Civil War. The Revolution is only briefly introduced through speeches by James Otis, Patrick Henry, and John Hancock. This is not the most diverse collection either. Only one Amerindian is represented. Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, and Sojourner Truth are included as African-American abolitionist voices. Women are more broadly represented (Frances Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Angelica Grimke, and Truth). These interesting speeches are dwarfed by around one hundred pages of Senate floor speeches on the 1850 Compromise. Since complaining about the selections in an anthology is about the lowest form of criticism, I will say no more about it. I only include this for those interested in exploring this collection. To his credit, Widmer did produce a volume that contains many of the important speeches of the era and thus could be a handy reference
Some of the most memorable selections are the briefest. Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech in Akron is always interesting as is John Brown’s defense and challenge to the court in 1859. To this list we could add the “Gettysburg Address,” which could not have been excised from the collection.
I went at these political speeches with the goal of extracted to what degree these figures engaged the world outside of the American republic. As expected, most political speeches elevated the American system of government and pointed out the particular historical mission of Americans. In 1825 Daniel Webster gave an address commemorating the Bunker Hill Monument. He certainly highlighted this view: "Let our object be, OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUNTRY. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid Monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty." The Revolutionary-era speeches, saw their struggle in more universal terms. They could not ignore that their struggle was taking place within an empire with a global reach. Yet, John Hancock, like Webster a half century later, saw Americans as unique. Unlike other people who "deserve to be enslaved" America "abounds in men who are superior to all temptation, whom nothing can divert from a steady pursuit of the interest of their country." So much for the struggle of American being the struggle of all mankind.
One way we can go at this is by remembering that the United States was born of an empire and was itself an empire at its birth. This point was not lost of Red Jacket, when he responded to George Washington in 1792. He was acutely aware that the settlement of the Revolutionary War meant the transfer of trans-Appalacian lands from one empire (the British) to another (the American.) He also points out that liberty is not unique to white Americans. "The President, in effect, observed to us that we of the Five Nations were our own proprietors -- were freemen, and might speak with freedom." In a very different context, Frances Wright extended the notion of liberty universally. Taking inspiration, she claims, from European notions of patriotism, she defined a patriot as a "lover of human liberty and human improvement" and "a useful member of the human family." She ends her July 4th speech: "So shall we rejoice to good purpose, and in good feeling; so shall we improve the victory once on this day achieved, until all mankind hold with us the jubilee of independence."
While Red Jacket pointed out that the Iroquois were victims of an imperial game, Ely Moore, in a speech to the General Trades' Union in 1833 pointed out who it was who actually build the empire. "Who were the pioneer of the West? What class of society prepared the way for the agriculturist, the merchant, and the professional man? Were they not artificers? Was not the forest made to bow before the stroke of the axe? . . . No country can be cleared and settled, nor colony founded, without the aid of the mechanic arts." I will only add that it is important that students of empire do not forget the willing and sometimes unwilling working class agents of empire. I will perhaps blog on Jack London in this regard in the future.
Theodore Parker narrowly avoids American exceptionalism by claiming that every group of people have a "peculiar genius or character which does not change, it has also an accordingly a particular work to perform in the economy of the world."
I could go on. Anti-slavery voices, well-represented in this volume, could not afford to ignore the global nature of slavery, yet some such as Henry Highland Garnet's speech in 1843, presented slavery as an American problem, ignoring the enslavement of Africans and African-Americans across the hemisphere. While American political speeches may not be the first place some would go to find a dialogue between the United States, its empire, and the world, I do think there is enough here to allow an investigation of this question.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Welcome!
This is my first blog entry. I recently became an academic vagabond. For the past three years, I have labored as a non-tenure track assistant professor of history (my chosen field), only to be told my contract has not been renewed at a point in the year when finding a Fall position proved to be difficult. Despite a mad effort at securing a position, I am now certain I will spend the next year liberated from American academic institutions. I do not feel that I have been victimized in this regard. I have never been comfortable with the tenure system due to its elitist assumption that people with terminal degrees and comfortable college or university positions deserve more job security than a custodian, landscaper, or steel worker. Also, I now believe being fired was a hard-to-digest blessing. Unlike some of my more brave comrades, I am unable to turn my back on academia. I have no doubt that I will compete in the academic job market next year but in the meantime, I will explore other options and make the best of my unemployment. I intend to live in Taiwan for the next year combining research (two book projects) with survival and reflection. The purpose of this blog will be to document and share whatever insights I have during this journey.
This blog will have three weekly entries, if life allows me such luxury. Once a week, I will comment on American writers as I systematically work through the Library of America. I do not intend to provide book reviews of established canon, nor do I presume to make new contributions to our understanding of these texts. I lack the expertise in the field and do not have the desire to engage the scholarship in a vain attempt to prove my originality. Instead, I will comment on what strikes my fancy. I will allow my readers to decide on the merit. You may expect one volume of the series to be considered per week.
Once a week, I will blog on my research, interests, and current events. I intend to explore the works of Richard Wagner in the coming weeks. I expect I have much to say on opera and anarchism.
Finally, I will provide weekly updates on my life in Taiwan and my ongoing reflection on academia.
Welcome to my blog.
This blog will have three weekly entries, if life allows me such luxury. Once a week, I will comment on American writers as I systematically work through the Library of America. I do not intend to provide book reviews of established canon, nor do I presume to make new contributions to our understanding of these texts. I lack the expertise in the field and do not have the desire to engage the scholarship in a vain attempt to prove my originality. Instead, I will comment on what strikes my fancy. I will allow my readers to decide on the merit. You may expect one volume of the series to be considered per week.
Once a week, I will blog on my research, interests, and current events. I intend to explore the works of Richard Wagner in the coming weeks. I expect I have much to say on opera and anarchism.
Finally, I will provide weekly updates on my life in Taiwan and my ongoing reflection on academia.
Welcome to my blog.
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