American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender

279 Pages·1995·24.656 MB·English

by  Robyn Wiegman

American Anatomies
New Americanists
A Series Edited by Donald E. Pease
American Anatomies
Theorizing Race and Gender
Robyn Wiegman
DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS Durham and London 1995
Chapters 3 and 4 are revised and expanded versions of
previously published articles. "The Anatomies of Lynching"
previously appeared in Journal of the History of Sexuality 3.3
(January 1993): 445-467 (reprinted by permission). "Bonds
of (In)Difference" first appeared in Cultural Critique as
"Negotiating AMERICA: Gender, Race and the Ideology of
the Interracial Male Bond;' 13.4 (Fall 1989): 89-117 (reprinted
by permission). Portions of chapters 5 and 6 appeared in
very different forms in "Melville's Geography of Gender;'
American Literary History 1.4 (Winter 1989): 735-753, and
"Toward a Political Economy of Race and Gender;' Bucknell
Review Special Issue "Turning the Century: Feminist Theory
in the 1990s," ed.Glynis Carr (Lewisburg, Pennsylvania:
Bucknell University Press, 1992): 47-67.
© 1995 Duke University Press All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Typeset in Minion by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
appear on the last printed page of this book.
Contents
Acknowledgments vu
Taking Refuge: An Introduction 1
Economies of Visibility
1 Visual Modernity 21
2 Sexing the Difference 43
The Ends of "Man"
3 The Anatomy of Lynching 81
4 Bonds of (In)Difference 115
White Mythologies
5 Canonical Architecture 149
6 The Alchemy of Disloyalty 179
Notes 203
Bibliography 239
Index 261

Acknowledgments
To acknowledge is always in some sense to pay a debt, and while I would
like, in the context of this study, to resist an uninterrogated language of
economy, it seems to me that intellectual work is often about accumula
tion, though not of property but of generosity. Like all debts, mine have
accumulated over time, but they take shape in my mind as locations, and
it is remarkable to me how they seem now to both begin and end in the
same place.
As my first mentors and now my colleagues, Cynthia Kinnard Dominick
and Ray Hedin of Indiana University were crucial to my developing inter
est in American studies, and I am honored to be teaching with those - as
with Jean Robinson -who first and most compellingly inspired me. I also
count myself fortunate to have as colleagues in the English department
a group of prolific young scholars, especially the Americanists Eva Cher
niavsky, Jonathan Elmer, and Cary Wolfe, whose intellectual passions and
pedagogical commitments have challenged me. To those who read in care
ful and tactful ways drafts of this manuscript-Kari Bloedel, Diane Elam,
Mary Favret, Elena Glasberg, and Andrew Miller-I can only hope that
my revisions reflect your contributions well. To Mary Jo Weaver and Susan
Gubar, who have helped make possible whatever ease of inquiry femi
nists now enjoy, I am most grateful for both intellectual comraderie and
friendship. And to Lynn Hudson, Theresa Kemp, Merrill Morris, and Jane
Rhodes: appreciation is due for your collective creativities.
This book began as a dissertation under the direction of Susan Jeffords
at the University of Washington and received generous commentary not
only from her, but from a collection of committed and thoughtful teach
ers: Carolyn Allen, Mark Patterson, Sara VandenBerg, and Evan Watkins.
At Syracuse University, the debates within the English department about
politics and the profession compelled me into a broad range of theoreti
cal reconsiderations, and I am pleased to now understand the significance
viii Acknowledgments
of such difficult, but necessary, contentions. I am especially indebted to
Steve Mailloux, Stephen Melville, Bill Readings, Margaret Himley, Steven
Cohan, and the members of the Feminist Theory Colloquium, Linda Alcoff,
Dympna Callaghan, and Ingeborg Majer O'Sickey. Tom Yingling was most
crucial to the intellectual vitality of my years at Syracuse and although he
died before any of our ideas for collaboration made it to the page, the theo
retical contours of this book are nonetheless shaped by him.
At Duke University Press, I have been fortunate to work with Ken
Wissoker, whose care for the manuscript and its political gestures, not to
mention his sense of things more generally, have at crucial points invigo
rated me. And Cathy Davidson demonstrated to me what we mean when
we talk about intellectual generosity.
And finally to those who cannot be tied to place-to Anne Fay, Phyllis
Radke, Judith Roof, and Sharon Wiegman: in whatever ways you will, I
thank you for knowing what this book means.
American Anatomies