"Objects of Emancipation": the Political Dreams of Modernism

1 “OBJECTS OF EMANCIPATION”: THE POLITICAL DREAMS OF MODERNISM A Dissertation Presented by Hanna Musiol to The Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of English Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts May, 2011 2 © 2011 Hanna Musiol 3 “OBJECTS OF EMANCIPATION”: THE POLITICAL DREAMS OF MODERNISM by Hanna Musiol ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Northeastern University, May, 2011 ABSTRACT 4 ABSTRACT In the first part of the twentieth century three interconnected modernist trends, primitivism, consumerism, and nationalism, imagined the inclusion of new persons in the national polity through their engagement with what I call “objects of emancipation.” In such modernist imaginings, “quasi (legal) persons,” to use Bruno Latour’s idea, could become New Women, New Negroes, or New (and “civilized”) Americans through their intimacy with empowering objects such as consumer products, keepsakes, cultural artifacts, commodified natural resources, and even waste. Such person-thing fabrications were central, in my view, to modernist politics and aesthetics, and I argue that literary genres often considered to be nonmodernist (including the bildungsroman and the documentary) were particularly important vessels for debates about things and persons. Specifically, my work explores how Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928), Fannie Hurst’s Back Street (1931), John Joseph Mathews’ Talking to the Moon (1945), and James Agee and Walker Evans’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) challenged the promise of personification-through-objects using generic conventions associated with both progress and material culture. I argue, however, that rather than simply attacking objectification as a negative, dehumanizing process, Hurst, Mathews, Larsen, and Agee and Evans examined how race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, as well as class, placed limits on the liberatory reifications of persons. They also recognized the multiple possibilities that different forms of reification could offer. Far from glorifying progress or naively recording the material world, then, their modernist bildungsromans and documentaries participated in the complicated reconceptualization of human and object rights that took place from the late 1920s through the late 1940s. 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation has been a collaborative effort in more ways than I am able to acknowledge here. Many people have supported me over the years, and I am very thankful for the intellectual nourishment and friendship they have offered. First of all, I would like to thank my wonderful dissertation committee, professors Carla Kaplan, Guy Rotella, and Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, without whose patience, encouragement, and constructive criticism my dissertation would have not have seen the light of day. Professor Kaplan, my dissertation director and mentor, has inspired me in more ways than I can express. She has pushed me to think about writing and material culture in ways that opened new questions and new horizons for me. She taught me the great importance of recognizing what Laura Ann Stoler calls “the pulse of the archive,”1 and respect for the labor it demands. I am also very thankful that she allowed me to continue my “occupation” of her office during the last stage of writing, which provided me a space in which to put things together, both intellectually and literally. Second, I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Rotella, for the consistent guidance he has offered me over the years. He was unfailingly supportive as a scrupulous reader and critic of my work. He also made me appreciate different critical paradigms than the ones I was most comfortable with. His consistent critique of my writing and intellectual work throughout my graduate program, but especially during the final months of my writing, was absolutely invaluable. 1 Along the Archival Grain 17. 6 Last, but not least, I want to thank Professor Dillon, whose encouragement and advice kept me going. Being her student and participating in the wonderful Futures of American Studies Institutes she co-directed have been transformative experiences for me and made me rethink my understanding of material and visual culture in extremely productive ways. Moreover, I would like to thank several people in the Boston-area libraries: Yves Hyacinthe, from Snell Library Interlibrary Loans at Northeastern University, for always finding archival material nobody else could find, in places where nobody looked, and for literally helping me dig things up from underground; Lois Conley and Amanda Rust, also from Snell Library, for their help with my unending requests; and Sarah Shoemaker, from the Brandeis University Special Collections, for assisting me with my research on Fannie Hurst. The Provost’s Dissertation Fellowship provided time and much-needed financial support during the final months of writing. I would also like to thank Kristen Ebert-Wagner, who provided editorial help on the final draft. Of course, I also could not have done much without my family and friends. I want to thank my brother, Marek Musioł, who encouraged, from the beginning, my decision to pursue a doctoral degree in Boston as the single parent of a toddler, and then did everything in his power to keep my spirits up in the years that followed. I would have certainly given up many times if not for his unwavering support, optimism, and generosity. My adopted family, Lisa Dush and Lee Hart, offered friendship, great conversations, and nourishment, and made me feel at home in Boston. I thank my Warsaw friends, Ania Trojanowska and Justyna Wyrąbkiewicz, for their support and for making me feel like I never left. My partner, Derek Jackson, needs to be thanked for his camaraderie, his patience, and his sustained support, especially in the last four frantic months, as well as for the many fierce backgammon games we have played over the years. His 7 sense of humor, his friendship, and his caring have lightened up my and Lila’s lives. Finally, to my daughter, Lila, I owe as much thanks as I owe an apology for making the early years of her life defined by my never-ending research and writing. Having you has made a great difference. Thank you for the joy and questions you’ve brought to my life. I dedicate this work to my beloved grandmother, Janina Podlodowska, who let me and Marek ruin her house while she was writing plays and poems. 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................5 TABLE OF CONTENTS.................................................................................................................8 INTRODUCTION: “Objects of Emancipation”: The Political Dreams of Modernism ..............9 SECTION ONE: Novel Fabrications of Things and Female Persons....................................37 CHAPTER ONE: “The Cultivation of Self” with Objects in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand..................................................................... 60 CHAPTER TWO: The “Social Lives” of Things and Persons in Fannie Hurst’s Back Street ................................................................. 101 SECTION TWO: National (Non)Fictions of Collective Subjects and Scarce Things .........140 CHAPTER THREE: “The Lowest Trash You Can Find?” Abundance and Shortage in James Agee and Walker Evans’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men .... 157 CHAPTER FOUR: “Biology of America”: “Human-nonhuman assemblages” in John Joseph Mathews’ Talking to the Moon ...................................... 211 POSTSCRIPT ............................................................................................................................. 258 WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................................... 264 9 INTRODUCTION: “Objects of Emancipation”: The Political Dreams of Modernism Without personification, there is no law, at least as we know it. —Joseph Slaughter1 The human is not a constitutional pole to be opposed to that of the nonhuman. —Bruno Latour2 Stuff is ubiquitous, and problematic . The idea that stuff somehow drains away our humanity, as we dissolve into the sticky mess of plastic and other commodities, is really an attempt to retain a rather simplistic and false view of pure and prior unsullied humanity. —Daniel Miller3 The overdetermined nature of all political identities is not established a priori in a transcendental horizon, but is always the result of concrete processes and practices. —Ernesto Laclau4 When in 2010 the Supreme Court extended First Amendment protections from human persons to corporate political actors as well as unions in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, the press on all sides of the political spectrum went berserk,5 alternately praising the Court for protecting free speech and condemning the Court’s decision, and what 1 Human Rights, Inc. 22. 2 We Have Never Been Modern 137. 3 Stuff 5. 4 On Populism 249. 5 See, for example, Chris Good’s “Citizens United Decision: Republicans Like It, Liberals Don’t”; Ken Klukowski’s “Founding Fathers Smiling After Supreme Court Campaign Finance Ruling”; and a discussion on NPR titled “‘Citizens United’ Ruling

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