Framing Essay- March 30th

Susan Beaty
Framing Essay- 3/29/09

This weeks readings featured an essay on agency in historical analysis by Walter Johnson and three pieces that focused on different aspects of the class formation in the Early Republic. While I feel that it is worth discussing the points raised by each of these essays separately, there are a few central themes that I would like to suggest for this week’s seminar.

As Stephen suggests in his framing essay, it might be useful to examine these readings through the lens of Johnson’s conclusions on agency. In this article, Johnson challenges the practice of “giving agency” to oppressed historical subjects, namely slaves, and calls for a new framework for historical analysis. He argues that there is a tendency in New Social History to conflate “humanity, agency, and resistance” by defining slaves as liberal historical subjects with free will, “discovering” the enslaved subject’s struggle to assert their own humanity, and equating acts of humanity with resistance to a system predicated on dehumanization. Johnson explains that this narrative produces narrow definitions of historical subjects and resistance that must be reconsidered; he insists that acts of humanity do not always amount to resistance, and that there are forms of resistance in between and beyond narrow conceptions of “everyday” and “revolutionary” action. Johnson’s central conclusion is that while “giving agency” was once a radical, politicized act of solidarity, it is now an obligatory and self-serving practice. Through, “some knowing laughter and a few ironic asides about the moral idiocy and contradictory philosophy of slaveholders,” historians align themselves with the historical “other,” in order to, “…make ourselves feel better and more righteous rather than to make the world better or more righteous” (121). Johnson says that we must move away from “rhetorical and performative gestures,” which have, “very few costs and, for white scholars are least, more than a few benefits,” (120) and begin to formulate new frameworks for addressing present oppressions based in the past.

While I agree that Johnson provides an incredibly useful critique of current historiographical practices, I find it difficult to imagine the kind of historical writing that Johnson is calling for. For example, in this weeks’ readings, Osborn, Bushman, and Sellers (via Gienapp) examine the hegemonic power of the middling and upper classes in the 19th century through their discussions of medical discourses on alcoholism, the cultural mechanisms of gentility, and the expansion of capitalism in the antebellum U.S. Each author makes the same safe criticisms of the discriminatory (classist, racist, sexist) ideologies of the dominant groups that Johnson alludes to in his piece at no personal risk. Osborn shows us how the medical establishment upheld class norms through differentiated diagnoses of alcohol abuse, thus creating, “… a distinction between the hopeless depravity of impoverished drunkards and the troubling failure of middle class inebriates.” Bushman discusses the ways in which the middle and upper classes justified the creation of a U.S. aristocracy by constructing a mythical egalitarian gentility that attempted to reconcile genteel culture with republicanism, capitalism, and traditional middle class values. Sellers paints Jacksonian America as a time of class conflict between an oppressive capitalist class and a oppressed, pre-capitalist lower class, wherein the former forced an economic shift towards free market capitalism on the former. He demonizes the business classes that used the legal and political systems to shape U.S. capitalism, and, “attributes no redeeming qualities to middle-class Americans” that valued social mobility. Thus, each of these authors acknowledges the collective, historical “agency” of the ruling classes and in doing so and condemns their use of hegemonic power. What do we make of this? In what ways do each of these authors align themselves with historically disadvantaged groups, and how does the agency of lower class subjects inform their arguments? Are these authors making the same “rhetorical gestures” that Johnson discussed in his essay, or are their criticisms of oppressive groups constructive? Are all of these arguments safe and depoliticized or are these authors taking risk or being innovative in their conclusions? What would Johnson have to say about these three narratives, and how might he change them to be more productive?

Another discussion topic that I would like to explore is the conflict between elitism and egalitarianism during this period. Both Osborn and Bushman explore the need for the middle and upper classes to reconcile their choices, lifestyle, and at times their very existence, with the revolutionary myths of republicanism and equality. In Osborn’s essay he discusses how the advent of alcohol abuse in the 1810s forced Philadelphia’s medical establishment to explain alcoholism in terms of contemporary social and economic structures. Doctors asserted that there was a difference between the “intemperance” of the poor, based in their moral degradation and inferiority, and the medical disorders of the middle and upper classes that could be diagnosed and treated. By creating two, classed versions of alcohol abuse the medical complex accounted for poverty and economic failure while reinforced the power of the middle and upper classes, thus perpetuating the myth of equal opportunity. Similarly, in Bushman’s discussion of gentility in the 19th century, he explains how the emerging aristocracy struggled to reconcile an imported, European genteel culture with U.S. values. He argues that the expression of gentility was a means of creating class authority and asserting class identity and difference, and that the U.S. elite turned to emulation of European gentility because it was the only tool they had at their disposal. This created problems, as gentility stood at odds with radical republicanism and middle class values of industry and hard work, but the aristocracy solved this by constructing a myth of accessible gentility. As Bushman points out, gentility was originally a cultural revolution in that it made it possible to purchase power rather than just inherit it. The elite classes of the early republic built on this narrative and insisted on an accessible, democratic gentility, welcoming everyone into society, “but only on elite terms.” By examining the case of the black elite, who “bought into the culture of refinement” but were ultimately excluded from the refined gentry, Bushman proves that the aim of the elite was, “to separate themselves from the lower classes, not to assimilate them.” (439) Thus, both authors show how the ruling classes struggled to explain the hypocrisy inherent to the American social order. What other examples of this have we seen this semester? Drawing on Morgan and Bouton, what are the historical roots of this contradiction? Where can we see the legacy of this hypocrisy in contemporary U.S. culture?

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