Founding Fictions (review)

These are good days for students of colonial America and the Early Republic. Scarcely a year passes without the appearance of at least several notable works from seemingly every corner of the historical vista. Although it is accordingly difficult, and probably unwise, to categorize these efforts, certain patterns of inquiry cannot fail to catch our attention. Among these, the most conspicuous is what has become known, regrettably, as “Founders Chic”: regrettable, because the phrase implies an enthusiasm that is both new and bound to pass; it thinly veils a contempt for history pitched to wide readerships; and it suggests an authorial stance blind to the dark sides of age. Some of this may in fact be the case; none of it is necessarily or always so. We have only to look a bit further to discover a vibrant scholarship on subjects ranging from market forces, material culture, political theory, gender dynamics, and of course, individual agents at play in the field of revolution and nation making.

Of late we have been fortunate to witness a growing interest in the rhetorical dimensions of the founding and its aftermath, a phenomenon attributable in no small part to what I will call, a bit anachronistically, the Illinois School of scholarship on the period. I say “anachronistically” because its main proponents have since moved on to different institutions. It nevertheless bears observing that in the first decade of the new century, Stephen Hartnett, Jeremy Engels, and now Jennifer Mercieca conspired, in effect, to introduce new ways of thinking and writing about the rhetorical import and legacy of Revolutionary thought. Needless to say, they come at their respective subjects in different ways and to different ends, and I do not mean to imply any sense of concerted or programmatic labor. But I do wish to stress that, in their own individual fashion, each has grounded their work on certain shared assumptions: skepticism about the claims of democracy advanced during the age and, indeed, ever since; that rhetorical theory, practice, and criticism may be integrated to real gain; and that the discursive texture of the time is best construed broadly. I will leave to the reader to decide whether such assumptions are warranted, but I do believe they command and reward serious consideration.

Mercieca wants to tell a story, or more precisely, she wants to tell a story about how people tell stories about each other. At the center of this enterprise is the question of citizenship: what it means, who gets to define what it means, who gets to participate in it and under what rules, and how it may be observed changing over time. The author’s approach, then, is certifiably rhetorical every which way: hers is an account of an accounting. Specifically, Mercieca is concerned to trace the transforming—and transformative—narratives shaping late-colonial and early-national conceptions of citizenship. To this end she features a conception of her own: “founding fictions,” by which she means “narratives that political communities tell themselves about their government.” Like formal constitutions, they have a constitutive role in political discourse. “Political fictions,” she stresses, “both create and reflect political realities, and as such they are central to any political community” (27).

Readers of Hartnett, Hayden White, and others will recognize that Mercieca’s use of the term “fiction” is not designed as a principle of discrimination between fact and falsity. It is rather meant to stress the constructed-ness and mutability of publically constituted, politically charged narratives of shared identity. And it is through this approach, the author suggests, that we are able to appreciate a paradox or tension at the heart of the story: “Above all,” she explains, “Founding Fictions highlights an important contradiction in American political theory and practice: national stability and active participation are fundamentally at odds” (2). That is, if I understand Mercieca’s argument, the enduring question in U.S. political discourse devolves on the question of whether a “citizen” is to be understood as an agent of governance or as a subject...