Transcendental Resistance: The New Americanists and Emerson's Challenge

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi introduction 1 I Emerson and Representation 1 the new americanists and representation: between interpellation and reification 19 The New Americanists and Postparadigmatic American Studies / The Crews-Pease Debate / The New Americanist Emerson: Empty Signification and the In-Between 2 representing potentiality 62 Emerson as Lecturer / Emerson’s Theory of Representation / Receptivity and Expression II Emerson and Identity 3 the new americanists and the violence of identity 107 The New Americanists and the Debate over Identity / Emerson and His Emersonian Critics / Denials of Reciprocity 4 identity and the parsimonious recognition of “friendship” 136 Identity, Recognition, and Approbation / The Masochism of the Double Standard / Weak Time / “Friendship” and Textual Recognition contents viii Contents III Emerson and the Nation 5 new americanist turns: empire, transnationalism, and utopianism 175 Empire Criticism / The Transnational Turn 6 emerson’s organicist nationalism 205 Nationalism as Idealist Organicism / The Critique of Materialism and the Two Cosmopolitanisms / Kossuth and the Politics of Abstraction epilogue 244 Notes 247 Bibliography 299 Index 313 ...