[As another
semester comes to a close, I’ll reflect on some of my fall courses and
conversations, focusing this time on moments and ways that they were relevant
to our own moment. I’d love to hear your Fall 2016 reflections as well!]
Two good
questions that have come out of my first chances to share the
new book.
First, I’ll
reiterate how much I’m hoping to find opportunities and venues in which to talk
about History and Hope in American
Literature: Models of Critical Patriotism. My year
and a half of book talks for The
Chinese Exclusion Act was one of my true career and life highlights to
date, for lots of reasons but most especially because it felt like a genuine
practice of my goals of connecting my ideas to different audiences and
conversations. That feels even more important to me now, and I’m open to literally
every possible venue, space, community, and conversation to which I might be
able to connect my thoughts on critical patriotism as a concept, the particular
texts and figures that serve as my examples, and lots of related American
histories and stories. So if you have any thoughts on such book talk opportunities,
please feel free and encouraged to mention them in comments here, or by email to me, and thanks very
much in advance!
At my first book
talk, offered through our graduate program’s Colloquium series, a thoughtful
Fitchburg State University English Studies Major asked how I would
differentiate my emphasis on critical patriotism from the version seemingly
offered by Donald Trump, who after all has pitched his critiques of
contemporary America as a vehicle through which to “Make America Great Again.” It
was a very good question, and it helped me to realize that my definition of
critical patriotism is particularly focused on the kind of historical
understanding and narrative it offers. That is, my central problem with MAGA is
that its critique of current America is contrasted with a mythical vision of
America’s past, one that overtly excludes all sorts of communities, cultures,
and histories in order to create that mythology of past “greatness.” As a
result, MAGA isn’t really critical at all, relying on a historical narrative
that parallels the easy
version of patriotism and positions our present and future goal as a return
to that simplified, mythologized, implicitly (if not indeed overtly) white
European Christian definition of our national identity and community. It’s no
coincidence, that is, that so much exclusionary hate has surged in the
aftermath of Trump’s electoral triumph—pointing us toward not a genuinely shared
future, but one more dark historical moment.
At my second talk,
part of an official launch for the book put on by FSU’s wonderful Center
for Teaching & Learning, one of our best English Studies grad students
asked another and even more complex and crucial question. She noted that in
many of my examples of critical optimism and hope, it’s minorities and other
oppressed Americans who find their way to those almost utopian perspectives and
actions, despite—or, as I argue it, through—the dark histories with which they’re
confronted. And she wondered whether that model of critical patriotism doesn’t
ask even more—too much, perhaps—of these particularly put-upon fellow Americans.
While I see the model as one that all Americans should emulate, there’s no
doubt that, as a middle class white man, I come at the issue from a position of
significant privilege, and should never assume that I can speak for Americans
(or anyone) who are in a different and more tenuous or threatened position. I
hope and believe that my work represents one central way that I can dedicate
myself to working for all Americans, past, present, and future, and most
especially for those whose histories and heritages are too often ignored,
forgotten, and excluded from our collective narratives of identity and
community. But this great question reminded me of how much I also must continue
to listen to voices and perspectives from all those communities, and revise my
own ideas as I do—which is one more argument for as many book talks as
possible!
Last reflection
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Book talk
opportunities you’d highlight? Other fall reflections you’d share?
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