Oh, I wish I were in Albuquerque this weekend for the American Studies Association annual conference: because the discussion of "Joe the Plumber" has revived the myth and symbol wing of American Studies. Back in the 1950s, American Studies was a new field--and we had great confidence in our country's ability to conquer every problem, social, financial, and moral. We had conquered the Great Depression, the Axis powers' threat to democracy, and the walls of Jim Crow were tumbling. Much progress was being made. American Studies at that point began to ask about what our nation's ideals were--and then began to ask about how those ideals matched up to reality. Hey, I'm in favor of national ideals; and even if we realize that we fall short--shamefully short--of them at points, they help lead the way to a better America.
So American Studies scholars like Henry Nash Smith asked in Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (about settlement in the nineteenth century) what our self-image was--as a way of determining who we are as a people. (Smith is one of the places where my interest in images of property in nineteenth century landscape art originated--Leo Marx' Machine in the Garden is another.) He--and many others--then turned to questions about the gap between the mythical America and the reality, as a way of further determining who we are. For in the gap between self-image (or aspirations) and reality, there is further evidence of what our country stands for and where it has to go.
Enter Joe the Plumber. When Senator McCain introduced him to the nation on Wednesday, Joe sounded to my ears to be a person who aspired to be a businessman and creator of jobs. I didn't have the sense so much that he was already a person making $250,000 a year. I thought he was perhaps someone who realized he wasn't quite where he planned to be in terms of his business. But the talk of Joe has gone in a somewhat different direction, because as we learn that apparently he's nowhere close to buying a business, now he's a symbol. The myth of Joe is different from the reality of Joe. And the myth of Joe--of people who do have businesses that make in excess of $250,000 (rather than those who aspire to have such businesses)--has captured the debate. We'll see where this all goes. The Democrats want to talk about the "historical Joe" and the Republicans want to talk about the "symbolic Joe."
Oh, one more thing. I was really excited to hear Senator McCain say this yesterday in Downingtown: "America didn't become the greatest nation on earth by spreading the wealth; we became the greatest nation by creating new wealth." Now that's a great topic for a book (or dissertation)--maybe even as good a topic as the idea of property in the Old South. There's a lot of wisdom on the campaign trail. My guess is that's more right than wrong, but as with most things in life, there's probably some truth on both sides.
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Posted by: dissertation | December 05, 2008 at 02:37 AM