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Copyright by Arthur Alvin VanderVeen, Jr. 2002 The Dissertation Committee for Arthur Alvin VanderVeen, Jr. certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Other Minds, Other Worlds: Pragmatism, Hermeneutics, and Constructive Modernism, 1890-1942 Committee: _________________________________ Warwick Wadlington, Co-Supervisor _________________________________ Phillip Barrish, Co-Supervisor _________________________________ Katherine Arens _________________________________ Evan Carton _________________________________ Brian Bremen Other Minds, Other Worlds: Pragmatism, Hermeneutics, and Constructive Modernism, 1890-1942 by Arthur Alvin VanderVeen Jr., B.A., M.Div., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2002 “The more we see, the more we think; while the more we think, the more we see in our immediate experience, and the greater grows the detail, and the more significant the articulateness of our perception.” William James Acknowledgments For their support, I would like to acknowledge the University of Texas at Austin Graduate School for a University Fellowship, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation for an Ernest Hemingway Research Grant, and the Mellon Foundation for a Summer Seminar Grant. I cannot claim that this support speeded the completion of this project, but it did allow me to pursue my research interests more broadly and deeply than I would otherwise have been able. I extend my sincerest thanks to Warwick Wadlington, whose appreciation for the particularity and fullness of the world has taught me to avoid simple binaries and remain open to the disturbing details that lead to new insights. I am also grateful to Phillip Barrish, who helped me develop and refine a critical vocabulary for describing how my selected texts operate rhetorically within their cultural and historical context—a set of critical tools that will serve me throughout my career. Katherine Arens challenged me to study the critical conversation I was joining as I took up my project, which improved my work immensely. By her respect for the vocation of the scholar, she has modeled values that will guide me professionally. I am grateful to Brian Bremen for first inspiring my interest in American modernism and pragmatism, and to Evan Carton, whose informed readings of American literature and the history of criticism provided a context for my work. For their love, support, and patience, without which I could not have completed this project, I thank my family and friends, Art and Bettye VanderVeen, Deanna Parrett, Brian Gantt, Libba Letton, Katherine Oldmixon, Bill Greenway, and Richard Campbell. v Other Minds, Other Worlds: Pragmatism, Hermeneutics, and Constructive Modernism, 1890-1942 Publication No. ________ Arthur Alvin VanderVeen, Jr., Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2002 Supervisors: Warwick Wadlington and Phillip Barrish Increasing dissatisfaction with a postmodern politics of identity during the 1990s has sparked a critical reconsideration of the nature of identity and difference, specifically as they are constituted within a modern liberal state. The virulent particularisms of identity-based social movements have persuaded many leftist critics that some kind of universalism is politically necessary to advance beyond the recognition of pure difference. As leftist critics take up the project of reconceiving the role of the universal within a framework of radical democracy, they have acknowledged uneasily liberalism’s staying power as a seemingly necessary set of ideas, while also objecting to its essentialist pretensions. Notions of an autonomous and free subject of rights does not fit easily with post- structuralist assumptions, a disparity which has generated significant discussion regarding whether liberalism’s thoroughgoing individualism can be reconstructed vi to support collective identities and their pluralist participation in a radical democratic society. Liberalism’s defining terms have not functioned unequivocally, however, as the essentialist concepts many leftist critics now figure them to be. This dissertation describes the efforts of “constructive modernists” in the U.S. to problematize liberal models of the self as founded on natural foundations. These efforts resulted in new representations of the self and society not as natural, given entities but as interdependent centers of discursive activity. In his experiential psychology, William James conceives of the self as a dynamic, coordinating center of interest and activity within the stream of consciousness. John Dewey expands James’s model to examine how individuals and society interdependently conceive, articulate, sustain, and modify these subjective formations through cultural expressions. Progressive intellectuals Herbert Croly and Walter Lippmann promote a discourse model of the public sphere, where self and society reciprocally define one another through democratic participation, cultural expression, and a pragmatist verification of truth. Other constructive modernists—including W. E. B. Du Bois, Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and William Faulkner—explore the implications of a modern, discursive self, showing how relations of power, compulsion, habit, and regressive cultural narratives constrain our efforts to write individual narratives of self-development into the historical, cultural narrative of the nation. vii Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Toward a Genealogy of the Modern Discursive Self.............................................1 CHAPTER ONE Embedded Worlds: The Radical Empiricism of William James...........................31 CHAPTER TWO Reconstructing the Real: John Dewey and the Reflex Arc..................................74 CHAPTER THREE Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and the Production of Public Opinion............123 CHAPTER FOUR Writing Jim Crow with W. E. B. Du Bois............................................................150 CHAPTER FIVE Turning Corners, Trading Worlds: The Constructive Modernisms of Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos ...........................................210 CHAPTER SIX Gold Coins, Smudged Souls, and Discourses of Value in Yoknapatawpha......276 CONCLUSION Over the Horizon...............................................................................................347 WORKS CITED.................................................................................................352 VITA..................................................................................................................381 viii Introduction Toward a Genealogy of the Modern Discursive Self Increasing dissatisfaction with a postmodern politics of identity during the 1990s has sparked a critical reconsideration of the nature of identity and difference, specifically as they are constituted within a modern liberal state. The virulent particularisms of identity-based social movements have persuaded many leftist critics that “some kind of universalism is politically necessary to advance a politics of social movements beyond the recognition of pure difference” (Lott 668). Just what that universalism is supposed to look like, notes Eric Lott, is the burning question. As leftist critics take up the project of reconceiving the role of the universal within a framework of radical democracy, they have acknowledged uneasily liberalism’s staying power as a seemingly necessary set of ideas, while also objecting to its essentialist pretensions. At the heart of classical liberal formulations of self and society is the notion that all persons are born into a state of nature, whose God recognizes the equal dignity of each, and that autonomous individuals may freely divest themselves of their natural liberties to become a “subject of rights” and enjoy the protections of civil society (Locke 269-270; 330). Notions of an autonomous and free subject of rights does not fit easily with post- structuralist assumptions, however, a disparity which has generated significant discussion regarding whether liberalism’s thoroughgoing individualism can be 1 reconstructed to support collective identities and their pluralist participation in a radical democratic society. Despite claims to natural foundations, liberalism’s defining terms have not functioned unequivocally as the essentialist concepts many leftist critics now figure them to be, even within the history of liberalism. Liberalism has helped shape different understandings of self, state, and civil society, as different formations of capitalism have. Its constituent elements and their reciprocally defining relationships bear a sedimented history of definitions particular to multiple historical and geopolitical settings. In taking up Locke, Smith, and Hume as their interlocutors, however, leftist critics position themselves against an ahistorical antagonist, overlooking certain historical reconfigurations of liberalism that have variously survived in and been displaced by the neo-conservative formulations that currently exercise hegemony in the United States. To avoid the dangers of articulating new models against false abstractions, it is important that we carry out a more careful genealogical analysis of liberalism’s formations, to which this project will contribute some initial observations and reflections. Specifically, I will describe efforts during the Progressive period