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