Identity and the Failure of America

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Identity and the Failure of America

From Thomas Jefferson to the War on Terror

John Michael

Table of Contents

PRESS:
NPR interview

$22.50 paper
ISBN: 978-0-8166-5144-3

$67.50 cloth
ISBN: 978-0-8166-5143-6

Investigates the idealistic promise of American justice and equality.

From Thomas Jefferson to John Rawls, justice has been at the center of America’s self-image and national creed. At the same time, for many of its peoples—from African slaves and European immigrants to women and the poor—the American experience has been defined by injustice: oppression, disenfranchisement, violence, and prejudice.

In Identity and the Failure of America, John Michael explores the contradictions between a mythic national identity promising justice to all and the realities of a divided, hierarchical, and frequently iniquitous history and social order. Through a series of insightful readings, Michael analyzes such cultural moments as the epic dramatization of the tension between individual ambition and communal complicity in Moby-Dick, attempts to effect social change through sympathy in the novels of Lydia Marie Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s antislavery activism and Frederick Douglass’s long fight for racial equity, and the divisive figures of John Brown and Nat Turner in American letters and memory.

Focusing on exemplary instances when the nature of the United States as an essentially conflicted nation turned to force, Michael ultimately posits the development of a more cosmopolitan American identity, one that is more fully and justly imagined in response to the nation’s ethical failings at home and abroad.

“Michael posits a more cosmopolitan American identity that addresses rather then masks ethical feelings.” —Choice

John Michael is professor of English and of visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester. He is the author of Anxious Intellects: Academic Professionals, Public Intellectuals, and Enlightenment Values and Emerson and Skepticism: The Cipher of the World.

320 pages | 6 x 9 | 2008

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Failure of America and the Claims of Identity

Part I. Failed Virtues
1. Jefferson’s Headache: Race and the Failure of a Benevolent Republic
2. Ahab’s Cannibals: Vicissitudes of Command and the Failure of Manly Virtue

Part II. Failed Sympathies
3. Lydia Maria Child’s Romance: Cosmopolitan Imagination and the Failure of Gender Reform
4. John Brown’s Identities: Nat Turner and the Fear of Just Desserts

Part III. Failed Judgment
5. Emerson’s Activism: The Trials and Tribulations of an American Citizen
6. Douglass’s Cosmopolitanism: American Empire and the Failure of Diplomatic Representation

Conclusion: American Identities and Global Terror

Notes
Index

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Identity and the Failure of America *From Thomas Jefferson to the War on Terror* John Michael Table of Contents PRESS: NPR interview		$22.50 paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-5144-3 $67.50 cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-5143-6
Investigates the idealistic promise of American justice and equality. From Thomas Jefferson to John Rawls, justice has been at the center of America’s self-image and national creed. At the same time, for many of its peoples—from African slaves and European immigrants to women and the poor—the American experience has been defined by injustice: oppression, disenfranchisement, violence, and prejudice. In Identity and the Failure of America, John Michael explores the contradictions between a mythic national identity promising justice to all and the realities of a divided, hierarchical, and frequently iniquitous history and social order. Through a series of insightful readings, Michael analyzes such cultural moments as the epic dramatization of the tension between individual ambition and communal complicity in Moby-Dick, attempts to effect social change through sympathy in the novels of Lydia Marie Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s antislavery activism and Frederick Douglass’s long fight for racial equity, and the divisive figures of John Brown and Nat Turner in American letters and memory. Focusing on exemplary instances when the nature of the United States as an essentially conflicted nation turned to force, Michael ultimately posits the development of a more cosmopolitan American identity, one that is more fully and justly imagined in response to the nation’s ethical failings at home and abroad. “Michael posits a more cosmopolitan American identity that addresses rather then masks ethical feelings.” —Choice John Michael is professor of English and of visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester. He is the author of Anxious Intellects: Academic Professionals, Public Intellectuals, and Enlightenment Values and Emerson and Skepticism: The Cipher of the World. 320 pages \| 6 x 9 \| 2008 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction: The Failure of America and the Claims of Identity Part I. Failed Virtues 1. Jefferson’s Headache: Race and the Failure of a Benevolent Republic 2. Ahab’s Cannibals: Vicissitudes of Command and the Failure of Manly Virtue Part II. Failed Sympathies 3. Lydia Maria Child’s Romance: Cosmopolitan Imagination and the Failure of Gender Reform 4. John Brown’s Identities: Nat Turner and the Fear of Just Desserts Part III. Failed Judgment 5. Emerson’s Activism: The Trials and Tribulations of an American Citizen 6. Douglass’s Cosmopolitanism: American Empire and the Failure of Diplomatic Representation Conclusion: American Identities and Global Terror Notes Index