Author: Dr. Shrout (Page 11 of 18)

By Dr. Shrout

This week was largely concerned with the African-American public sphere, and the ways in which participating in that sphere could be useful for people otherwise excluded from formal politics, but who did not want to, or could not, engage in violent rebellion.

The question of whether the public sphere is a useful concept, or whether having a public sphere was useful to enslaved and free people of color, was of concern to both Sherwood and Carolyn. Sherwood – who was initially unimpressed by Habermas’s arguments – was persuaded of their applicability to this particular case. Carolyn was also persuaded, but raised concerns about the viability of Newman’s argument, given his occasionally bombastic language.

Avery linked the reading to our past discussions of autonomy and Native print culture. I would encourage everyone to consider the viability of the concept of the public sphere to other situations we’ve discussed – and particularly to American Indian print culture – and to query the utility of “the public sphere” as a concept going forward. In what situations is it useful? Less useful?

By admin

Richard Newman’s arguments for how a culture of print, especially pamphleteering, allowed the oppressed black minority to have access to the public sphere, were for the most part, presented without bias. He discusses with neutral language how print “allowed black views to be heard while also forcing white society at large to reconsider its justification of bondage” (182). However, I stumbled over his choice of words near the beginning of the article, when he introduces the concept of the public sphere. He claims that the print sphere offered room for black views, and that “Southern legislators and politicians discovered this unpleasant fact in 1830″ (181).

I tripped over the choice of the word “unpleasant” in describing the opportunity for black expression. When I re-read the sentence, I understood that Newman means that to the aforementioned white political elite, this was an unpleasant reality. However, he does not make this context clear in the construction of the sentence. Instead, the adjective is simply thrown in, as though it were Newman’s personal opinion that this opportunity was unpleasant. Considering that the framing of history is almost as important to an argument as the facts presented, this is an unfortunate mistake. A reader might even mistake this shakily constructed sentence as a slip that reveals bias of the author.

Continuing in the vein of diction, I also stumbled over another word Newman chooses when discussing pamphleteers, essayists, and public speakers. Newman writes that if blacks were refused the vote or could not effect change with their sparse votes, “they would nonetheless inject their views into the wider arena of debate over slavery and race,” presumably through the distribution of print media. Newman continues that “in doing so, black activists would demolish racial stereotypes” (183). I found the choice of the word “demolish” to be ill-advised. Though the actions of the activists would most likely challenge racial stereotypes, I think it is clear overstatement to claim that they were demolished. This implies that they were destroyed completely. Once again, Newman would be wise to choose his words more carefully to ensure that his framing of the arguments is fair and does not throw his authority into question.

By Sherwood

Okay, I’m coming clean. I hated the Jurgens Habermas reading from earlier this semester- the one that described the formation of a “public sphere.” It explained how print culture contributed to an environment in which private individuals felt comfortable identifying and discussing issues with society. Habermas’ prose was dense, confusing and overwhelmingly philosophical. For example, what is this supposed to mean: “when applied synchonically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a social-welfare state, the fuse into a clouded amalgam.” Because of sentences like these, I found it pretty difficult to really pin down what Habermas really meant by the “public sphere.” However, in the context of this week’s reading, I feel much more confident about my understanding of the Habermas article.

In “Protest in Black and White,” Richard Newman describes black disenfranchisement in the United States during the antebellum period. Because “over 90 percent of American blacks resided in the slave South throughout the 1860s,” whites frequently deterred black voters from the polls and curtailed their right to vote (180). Paramilitary groups threatened to harm them or destroy their property, while state legislatures made voter registration more difficult by requiring literacy tests, charging poll taxes and establishing grandfather clauses, for example. Newmen also explains how simply by being black, these citizens were inevitably drawn into the “broader politics of race, civic participation, and nationhood” in their everyday lives (181). As free, voting, sometimes educated and sometimes wealthy blacks, they themselves were topics of controversy. Many whites were simply offended by the sight of them.

Here’s where things converge. So how did black Americans, as an ethnic minority, participate in a democracy that marginalized them so? To resist disenfranchisement and oppression more generally, black Americans gained a public voice by “seizing print” (181). Sound familiar? Newman’s narrative of black resistance is a great example of Habermas’ public sphere. The printing press, which Newman explains was essentially immutable, empowered black Americans and gave them a means of communicating ideas over both time and space.

They were able to express their political views openly despite being disenfranchised. It also allowed them to advance their position in society; in her blog post, Avery points out that “black leaders differentiated themselves as ‘elite’ so that they might mirror white structures of hierarchy. Because of Newman’s concrete example, I have a new appreciation for Habermas’ theory of the public sphere.

By Avery

Newman presents an inspiring picture of black activist print culture in the early 19^th century. He claims that black activists shrewdly and brilliantly made use of printed documents, especially pamphlets, to assert “black independence and control” (184). In Newman’s narrative, African-American freeman accomplish perhaps the ultimate evasion of the white American male panopticon. By making use of pamphlets, activists were able to subvert white definitions of space and bind the black community together. For example, the white landowner may not permit a free black to consort with enslaved people on his property, but when a small pamphlet slips onto the property, the author of the pamphlet and its readers have carved out their own space for communication, all unbeknownst to the landowner.

One of the most intriguing points Newman brings up is the advent of hierarchy in the black community. Newman claims that black advocates tended to rise to elite status and furthermore paints their rise as a calculated political move. In Newman’s view, black leaders differentiated themselves as “elite” so that they might mirror white structures of hierarchy. Doing so ensured that elite whites would be more willing to parlay with African-American leaders because they would be recognized as fellow elites. Now, I’m not sure I totally buy that argument considering the rarely egalitarian nature of humankind. I’m betting that blacks looking to define themselves as elite were also driven by at least somewhat selfish motives. However, Newman’s perspective does create an empowering vision of a marginalized group, even if it is a bit too rosy.

It is interesting to look at Newman’s argument beside our discussion of American Indian print culture. Newman focuses on the ways that black activists were able to stick it to the man, the ways that pamphlets proved black intellect and reified black history. As Sherwood points out, however, American Indian writers continued to face great scrutiny of their intelligence even after they had gained fluency in English. Obviously, later in American history, Jim Crow laws prove that black Americans also continued to be belittled and dehumanized, but at this point, just looking at Newman’s argument, it seems that black intelligence was more readily accepted than American Indian intelligence.

By Dr. Shrout

“US Slave Free 1789-1861”

By Dr. Shrout

This week, both Avery and Sherwood wrote about different aspects of information technology in the early nineteenth-century United States, and two different approaches to the question of how news/information/learning “worked” in an expanding American nation.

Avery linked Round’s discussion of Native appropriations of American print and religious cultures to John’s discussion of the expanding postal system. She also introduced a new theorist – Granovetter – who “proved that novel information tends to come from nodes that are not well-connected to the network (weakly tied to other nodes).” I wonder how Native print culture would fit into Granovetter’s model – did American Indians mostly consume news from other sites of American news production, or did Indian print culture percolate into wider American information contexts?

Sherwood took a different approach to networks that connected Native and white Americans. He pointed out that fluency in multiple languages (both English and Native syllabaries) allowed American Indians access to broader spheres of information. One of the things we’ll discuss in class today is how much power those spheres actually gave Native peoples, and how they deployed that power.

By admin

Unfortunately, in trying to decide on one of my previous 3 suggested topics to follow up with for my final project, I have encountered significant problems with all of them and seem no closer to reaching a final decision. Please forgive any grammatical or formatting errors in this post as I am rushing to get my thought process down in writing before midnight!

Firstly, my issue with my first topic is, with hindsight, quite easy to foresee; whilst the internet has all sorts of articles and diagrams to represent how membership of certain groups had fluctuated over time, my biggest issue with this project idea is how I could unify all my findings under one argument. Whilst it would be possible to posit causes for any and all microscopic fluctuations in membership rates for any number of political groups based on dates and known occurrences, it would be impossible to take all of those suggested causes and tie them together with some sort of unifying argument, unless I changed my perspective and approached it in terms of the varying consequences on political memberships of one certain event.

My second idea is, while ripe with potential, in jeopardy of forcing me to bend sources to one particular argument. I am worried that with a focus on education/literacy standards/rates I will be tempted to force every historical occurrence into the timeline of American literacy.

Thirdly, whilst there was plenty of resources to be found in terms of the development of the railway (particularly with useful maps), aside from analysing the return addresses of hundreds of letters around certain dates I am struggling to see how I could plot the location of certain influential individuals over time. If this is the only way, would it take that long? And how certain could I be?

So that is where I sit at the moment, if anyone has any solutions for me or suggested other topics, please don’t hesitate to let me know!