A Search for Literary Identity in Early American Literature

So, as I read the articles as they appear on our schedule, I made comments and observations in a notebook.  Now, don’t worry.  I’m not going to simply re-write my notes, but I would like to point out how much they all seem to converse with one another.  (Obviously, these are not their complete arguments since I don’t have space enough to give them all the attention they may deserve.) 

 

Gustafson and Hunter feel as though early Americanists are needed to contribute to the “understanding of the field as a whole” (215).  Bauer wants a more “polycentric historicism” as defined by Roland Greene (220).  Bost desires for America to be viewed in a “hemispheric dialogue” (236).  This concern with de-centering the United States and having a conversation with other cultures in connection to the past and present all seem to be coming together to form a transnational approach to literature. 

 

Wait though, we’re not done yet.  Fitzgerald and Wyss come together and work to literally bring “the contemporary present to the historical past” and discuss “the relationship between the academic fields of early and contemporary Native literature” (241).  Anderson agrees that Native texts see “the past in the present and the future in the past” and argues that early Native studies matter to more contemporary scholars (252).  Meanwhile, Parrish might rummage through the “boring” parts of early American studies to find that you must “Let your archive be mobile.  Let it be textual or let it be biological.  Follow it, in and out of holds” (271).  Littlefield may respond to Parrish with a proposition that “archival constructions are simultaneously epistemological and agnotological” (276).  Littlefield sees the cultural productions of both ignorance and knowledge (agnotological and epistemological) as being useful ways “to theorize archival methodology itself” (276).  Sayre concerns himself with captivity narratives and the earlier stereotypes of Native Americans and the contemporary stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims (327).  Again, connections between the past and the present, early American studies and contemporary US studies, and the United States and other nations are all interacting with one another.  Edwards continues to build on Sayre’s points (and Reddy also kind of falls into this section), while Watts asks, “If the US is not an `immemorial’ nation based in idealized democratic principles is the only other option a racist, sexist, and elitist empire whose literature is merely propaganda?” (449).  Watts petitions us to consider “the model of the double minded settler” (449).  Yet, do we want to be unsettled and consistently of two minds?  Is there not another option?  White and Drexler point out that there is an “absence of a strong literary cannon” for early Americanists but claim that they are not lamenting this but that it shows “a sign of a relatively progressive, open, and representative sense of coverage” (475).  It most certainly is broad, but it is also unstable.  White and Drexler use the analogy of Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” to point out that it is important not to miss what you are searching for simply because it is right in front of you, which they say are “the texts that out to be commonly situated, discussed, and debated” (482).  However, Gustafson becomes overwhelmed in history again but makes an interesting point about the link between democracy and empire, which we easily always divide. 

 

Traister though uses another analogy that of  “America” as the international airport terminal and how transnationalists may easily become “universalists” and encroach on the territories of other scholars from different departments (4-18).  It seems as though Traister may have a point on how transnationalist may simply be falling into another form of America exceptionalism (23).  Nevertheless, Fluck simply categorizes transnationalism into two types: aesthetic and political (367-68).  Fluck defines the aesthetic transnationalism as “a promise of rejuvenation of the field and its `tired´ practices” (368) and political transnationalism also being “transnational radicalism because it is an extension of cultural radicalism beyond the nation-state” (372).  It is the flexibility and fluidity of identity that Fluck embraces even more than stability (376). 

However, the problem I see is that if you do not have some sort of stability, then it will be difficult to identify anything, and it could cause early American literature to still have the feeling of the “other” studies in American literature that is also closely kin to US history.  Suddenly, the past and the present seem to kind of muddle up the future of where transnational studies may be going.  One more observation and I’ll conclude this rather lengthy blog.  I noticed in the readings that “America” and “transnational” were probably (all of these are estimates by the way) the most commonly repetitive terms throughout our reading with “history,” “early,” and “contemporary” being probably the second most popular group of terms.  Ironically, I find the terms “literary,” “literature,” and “cannon” being more than likely in the third or even fourth (if you count “exceptionalism” for the third) group.  I felt as though White and Drexler may have had the best analogy when they used Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.”  It’s not that the Prefect did not have a thorough and even impressive methodology for finding the letter.  The problem was that he never read any of the letters on the desk in the first place.