In addition to reviewing the syllabus and reading list, point out that:
It is not possible to comprehensively survey American political thought in ten weeks; think of this course rather as a set of topics within this larger subject, tenuously unified by the question of the existence of an American political identity and its character.
Readings for each segment are alphabetic by author, and this is the order in which they appear in the packet, but I will tell you at the beginning of each new segment which order to read them in.
Because of the late addition of a tutorial on the Internet, we have only one class session for the debate on the Constitution. I may decide to add a second session after the Internet tutorial, sacrificing a session later in the course. In any case, you still have a full week to do the readings on the Constitutional debate, so please cover them all. You may treat the Constitution itself as a reference document.
I will endeavor to post lecture outlines and/or notes on our class’s web home page 36 hours in advance of their use in class.
How is American identity expressed in this spot?
Tension between celebration of the new and of tradition (explicit, but also implicit in the tension between much of the content, on the one hand, and the form--a compact statement of American identity--on the other).
Diversity of people and experiences versus the peculiar sameness alluded to in some of the final images (mass of graduates, etc.). Mass society is euphemized as mass accomplishment, but the graduates, however many disciplines they represent, experience a great deal of uniformity and subservience to authority in their education.
The spot is extraordinarily celebratory, from the opening of the child singing the nursery rhyme about Columbus to the closing smile of the African-American girl.
Differences are masked: nothing about Columbus as conqueror, Westward settlement portrayed heroically and romantically (the wagon train) without reference to its genocidal consequences, no scenes of poverty, violence, etc. Even the inclusion of political banners seems designed more to affirm a liberal notion of respect for human and civil rights than to bring out the deep social conflicts over race, gender, and sexual orientation.
The centrality accorded technological achievements, from trains and planes to the Space Shuttle launch. Given the narrative structure of a march or parade, these seem to be saying that we as a people move, advance, and achieve through our technologies. Since these seem to be the only images explicitly referring to the techno-economic sphere, the spot indirectly applauds American capitalism as the motor of American progress.
Iconic expression versus textual -- which raises the possibility that one could approach “American political thought” not as we are, through an exploration of historically significant writings, but “phenomenologically,” that is, in terms of how people (of other countries as well as America) come to understand and give meaning to America.
What is the relationship of the “million stories in the streets” at the end of the spot and the images of the Native American dancers and the African-American child? Throughout the spot, there is an obvious effort to affirm cultural diversity, and clearly diversity is a rich source of stories. Stories usually depend upon making differences, particular lives, understandable--they invite recognition or at least an effort to imagine what life is like for others. At the same time, since the spot masks hostility, exploitation, the display of prejudice--differences which divide, threaten, engender conflict, and so forth--the appeal to cultural diversity seems frankly insincere. It also takes for granted that we are all Americans, when despite the history of racial, gender, and ethnic exclusionism and the reality that to many who live here national identity may not be preeminent. Many Native Americans, for example, identify first with their own nation and only secondarily or not at all with America.
Despite everything, I still get a tingle watching this -- the triumph of advertising. This raises the whole question of how subject to power American identity is.
I will use the term “American” throughout this course in referring to the United States and its political culture. Since there are millions of others--Canadians, the peoples of Latin America, members of numerous indigenous nations--who are all inhabitants of the Americas, this appropriation of the term “American” is arguably unfair, a legacy, perhaps, of “Manifest Destiny” and of the imperial paternalism of the Monroe Doctrine. However, its use is a longstanding custom both within the country and internationally, and I will abide by this.
There are three interrelated, fundamental problems with the concept of American political thought. First, the aim of most theorists of American political thought is to synthesize its diversity in order to create a national identity, a protagonist in whose character the national character is embodied and through whose intellectual biography the nation’s history is explained. Yet as we will see, the stronger the synthesis, the greater the protest is likely to be from those who believe that it presents a deformed image of the nation, neglects important currents in its past or present political culture, or lends support to a particular ideological view. There is no consensus either in academic or popular culture about national identity, yet there is a near universal need to assert that such an identity exists. After all, when speaking of Americans or describing oneself as an American, we are taking the existence of such an identity for granted. This is an instance of a general problem with language: concepts intended to illuminate threaten instead to tyrannize or delude us.
The second fundamental problem concerns the relationship between ideas and practices, between what people say and how they act, between what they say and where, socially and historically, they say it, between what is said and what remains unsaid, between what is said at a particular moment in history and what is preserved through history.
People may be unaware of the beliefs which shape their actions, or may profess beliefs which they do not hold in order to manipulate others. Beliefs which seem outlandish to us may be explicable if we but understood the context in which they were adopted. Or on the contrary, we may think we understand someone because we have projected our reality onto them.
Ideas about American political thought may actually reflect a particular location within its culture, a specific mode of inquiry, or simply the rhetorical requirements of a particular occasion.
We might sum up this welter of problems by speaking of two fears which shadow all inquiry and communication: the fear that inquiry will result not in truth but in self-delusion, and the fear that the voice one trusts is actually manipulative (or that the voice one does not trust is actually truthful).
The third fundamental problem concerns the teaching of American political thought. Embedded in different approaches to teaching this course are differing assumptions about the subject itself.
For the sake of brevity, imagine two models of teaching. In one, I’m an expert whose responsibility it is to provide you with knowledge and an authoritative assessment of this subject. My competence is based upon a prior mastery of American political thought and its effective communication to you; your competence depends upon correctly assimilating what I say. Naturally, I’m in charge of the learning process in this model.
The second model of teaching puts you on center stage. I’m like a consultant you’ve engaged to assist you to become better at doing something. The “something” in this case is developing your own interpretation of American political thought. I provide you with information as needed, help you when you get stuck, warn you about pitfalls, and in general play a facilitative role in a learning process that you become increasing adept at managing yourself.
Whatever the intrinsic merits of these two models, they imply different things about the subject of American political thought. If the main emphasis falls upon transmitting a political tradition, a set of beliefs and values characteristic of America, then apparently the first model should be employed. If, instead, the main emphasis is placed upon you as participants in shaping American political thought, then the more self-guided learning process of model two seems appropriate.
Now in reality, much of my approach to teaching is pre-determined by the university. The very power it grants me--to choose the readings and the topics, make assignments, establish grading criteria and give you your grades, and so forth--corresponds to the model of the teacher as expert. And to the best of my ability, I strive to fulfill the responsibilities inherent in this power. However, I think that a learning process that places more emphasis on your investigative and creative thought is desirable.
My approach to teaching reflects this commitment in several ways:
The readings were chosen to illuminate the ideological dimensions of pivotal conflicts in American politics, past and present. See for yourselves how Federalists and Anti-Federalists viewed the Constitution; how populists, urban social reformers, “free market” neo-liberals and others responded to industrialization, and so on. Rather than give you a predigested synthesis of American political thought, I’ve tried to give you the materials with which to draw your own conclusions.
I’ve made use of Internet tools, including the world wide web and newsgroups, to expand the possibilities for communication among us. As already mentioned, this course has its own on-line discussion forum. You have easy access to me via e-mail. And I’ve included in the course’s web home page a number of links to on-line sources of information about American politics and history.
The small groups are intended to be settings for extensive discussion of the readings, for formulating your own questions about them, for linking them to the political and cultural issues which concern you, for getting to know other students with whom you share at least this interest, and as a place where you can give constructive feedback on each other’s writings and ideas.
I’ve included several grading options in order to allow you the flexibility to choose the set of requirements that best suits your own learning style.
Finally, while I will seek to honestly understand and fairly represent the thought of those we read in this course, I will neither conceal my own perspective behind a mask of objectivity nor seek to impose it on you.
Preview of the Next Lecture
Read Louis Hartz first. His 1950s characterization of America as unconsciously and compulsively wedded to liberal values indebted to Locke still retains the quality of an orthodoxy which many argue with but almost no one ignores. Do not be troubled if you do not understand some of his references to European political history; the gist of his thesis can still be gleaned. He argues that the exceptional feature of American politics is that it was founded on an escape from the feudal oppressions of class-divided European societies. As a result its political universe, though rich in conflict, lies almost wholly within the horizons of liberalism, a consensus which remains largely invisible precisely because it is virtually universal, uncontested, and taken-for-granted.
Next read Rogers Smith. His 1992 article is a frontal assault on Hartz’s thesis, or what Smith calls the “Tocquevillian story.” His earlier research into laws governing citizenship led him to conclude that Hartz grossly exaggerated the degree to which “equality of conditions” has characterized American society. What he instead finds is a flux, a back-and-forth struggle in America between liberal and republican values and what he calls “ascriptive forms of Americanism,” that is, beliefs that certain categories of people are better than others and deserve privileges.
Finally, read Eric Foner. Foner’s analysis of the question “Why is there no socialism in the United States” intersects the concerns of Hartz and Smith at several points. Foner disputes Hartz, though on different grounds than Smith, arguing in effect for the persistence in America of an indigenous radicalism based on radical republicanism and on a conception of Protestant ethics requiring the pursuit of social justice. He also highlights the real influence that socialist ideas and parties had at certain times in American history. Beyond this, however, Foner undercuts the thesis of American exceptionalism in a different, and, if you’re a socialist, perhaps a gloomier way. He argues by way of conclusion that Europe is really not so different, at least as regards the strength of socialist parties, from the United States.