Fleshing Out America: Race, Gender, and the Politics of the Body in American Literature, 1833-1879

6. "Who Need Be Afraid of the Merge?": Whitman's Radical Promise and the Perils of Seduction

6 "WHO NEED BE AFRAID OF THE MERGE?" Whitman's Radical Promise and the Perils of Seduction A child said, What is the grass? fetchingit to me with full hands, How could I answer the child? I donot know what it is any more than he.... Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sproutingalike in broadzones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as well as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. —Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" "Who need be afraid of the merge?" Walt Whitman dares readers in the debut edition of "Song of Myself" (1.136).l Indeed, the rest of Leaves of Grass (1855) seems to repeat, "Who?" For Whitman, the "merge" is an all-encompassing force, blending sexuality with politics, philosophy, and spirituality to produce unprecedented generativepower.Politically Whitman's mergepromises to fuse the disparatebodies that make up the bodypolitic, to create a "race ofraces" in a teeming "nation of nations." Philosophically the merge has the potential to reverse what Whitman perceives as the devastating effects of the Cartesian split between mind and body, thereby reinvigorating an individual's capacity for knowledge. Spiritually the merge links sexuality to the process of cosmic revelation and quest. The first edition of Leaves of Grass delights in the seemingly inexhaustible potential of the merge, positioning the body and sexuality as forces of cosmicsignificance. By the time Whitman first published Leavesof Grass, two scientific "truths" were becoming accepted by many Americans: the concept of a sexually fragile 174 F L E S H I N G OUT A M E R I C A middle class and the belief that race and gender were innate categories ofdifference . Aspects of these beliefs offended Whitman's most cherished convictions —his faith in the inevitable realization ofdemocracy on the continent and his idealization of Americans as a new, healthy, vital race. Consequently, it is against these related dogmasthat Whitman launches some ofhis most masterful attacks. He turns sexuality and the body into "uniform hieroglyphic^]" (1. 97) that consecrate democracy. He champions a polymorphic, nonprocreative sexual energy to challenge antebellum associations between productivity and sexuality. Most importantly, he creates an epistemology of the body that fundamentally challenges the modern structures of knowledge then coming to dominate his age. Unlike scientists who taught about the body, Whitman trusted his body as a teacher, welcoming it as an equal partner in the search for knowledge. The first part of this chapter explores the radical implications of Whitman's merge, demonstrating how his poetry can be read in opposition to the discourse of science, despite his personal fascination with the scientific innovations of his age.2 Yet Whitman's question, "Who need be afraid of the merge?," betrays the potential threat implicit in his work, indicating by its interrogative and bold tone that the poet expects some resistance to his call to merge. As Margaret Fuller's reluctance to merge with the sublime at Niagara Falls indicates (see chapter 5), for those who were often defined by their corporeality in politically precarious ways the merge represented peril as well as promise. Whitman's masterful absorption threatens to obliterate difference, to assume too much, to consume readers entirely as he fuses them into his ideal race ofAmericans. To learn Whitman's lesson, the reader must be absorbed into the poet, as Whitman aspires one day to be reabsorbed "affectionately" by America.3 The jeopardy associated with a corporeal merge parallels the threat of a literary one. Professing to speak for those who are silenced, Whitman assures readers that he is a comrade to people of "every hue and trade and rank, of every caste and religion " (1. 343). Welcoming both sexes with remarkable enthusiasm for his time, he yearns to be the "poet of the woman the same as the man" (1. 426) and to speak for forbidden and silenced voices. Yethow can one "act as the tongue of" another (1. 1244) without risking the silencing of that other's voice? The danger the merge posed to certain groups, particularly women, African Americans, and Native Americans, is evident in Whitman's texts,- it is oneof the contradictions his poetics attempts to contain, especially through parataxis and the catalog technique. Whitman's use of the poetic catalog seems to be, as "WHO N E E D BE A F R A I D...