Bernd Herzogenrath - An American Body: A Deleuzian Approach

RE-MAPPING THE TRANSNATIONAL

A Dartmouth Series in American Studies

SERIES EDITOR

Donald E. Pease

Avalon Foundation Chair of Humanities
Founding Director of the Futures of American Studies Institute
Dartmouth College

The emergence of Transnational American Studies in the wake of the Cold War marks the most significant reconfiguration of American Studies since its inception. The shock waves generated by a newly globalized world order demanded an understanding of Americas embeddedness within global and local processes rather than scholarly reaffirmations of its splendid isolation. The series Re-Mapping the Transnational seeks to foster the cross-national dialogues needed to sustain the vitality of this emergent field. To advance a truly comparativist understanding of this scholarly endeavor, Dartmouth College Press welcomes monographs from scholars both inside and outside the United States.

For a complete list of books available in this series, see www.upne.com.

Anthony Bogues, Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire, and Freedom

Bernd Herzogenrath, An American Body | Politic: A Deleuzian Approach

Johannes Voelz, Transcendental Resistance: The New Americanists and Emersons Challenge

BERND HERZOGENRATH

AN AMERICAN BODY | POLITIC

A Deleuzian Approach

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE PRESS

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Published by
University Press of New England
Hanover and London

Dartmouth College Press

Published by University Press of New England

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For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Herzogenrath, Bernd, 1964

An American body | politic : a Deleuzian approach / Bernd Herzogenrath.

p. cm.(Re-mapping the transnational)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58465-932-7 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-58465-933-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-58465-942-6 (eBook)

1. Human body (Philosophy) 2. Deleuze, Gilles, 19251995. 3. Human bodyPolitical aspectsUnited States. 4. Human bodySocial aspectsUnited States. 5. Political scienceUnited StatesPhilosophy. 6. Human body in literature. 7. Literature and societyUnited States. 8. Politics and literatureUnited States. I. Title.

B105.B64H47 2010

128.6dc22 2010028333

To the Memory of Emory Elliott

For Claudia

For Frank

Paul Reveres frontispiece to William Billings,
The New England Psalm Singer [1770]

Marquis de Barbi-Marbois,
Allegory of the American Union [1784]

The Inward Man, from Andreas Vesalius,
De Humani Corporis Fabrica [1541]

A GREAT MANY friends and colleagues have contributed to, supported, and inspired this book and the work and efforts that have gone into it. On the support side, I first have to mention the late (and great) Emory Elliott. From the time I first met Emory (at the end of the last century), he supported my work and believed in itthus, to his memory I dedicate this book. His encouraging presence will be sorely missed.

On the inspiration side, first mention goes to Hanjo Berressem, supervisor and friend, who kick-started my interest in Deleuze and has added fuel to the fire ever since. My perspective on things is decidedly marked and shaped by his influencewithout him, this book wouldnt have seen the light of day.

I cannot possibly mention all the good friends who, in discussions and informal talks, have shaped my ways of seeing things, but I need (and want) to single out Philipp Hofmann, Leyla Haferkamp, Kristin Bse, and Joan Richardson.

Finally, I would not have been able to write this book without the loving support of my parents, Marga and Josef Herzogenrath; my brave little brother, Frank (I cannot even begin to fathom how brave!); and, most of all, my wife and partner in crime, Claudia Dapperthanx for being there, thanx for being who you are. While I am preparing this manuscript for publication, our first baby is about to arrive in the world hooray!!!

And in the really final flicker of these credits, I would like to thank Dartmouth College Pressin particular, series editor Don Peaseand the University Press of New England for giving me this opportunity. The experience has been wonderful, and even though I dont have faces to go with the names, the contact always felt very personal. The faceless names are Richard Pult, Peter Fong, Jeanne Ferris, and Lys Ann Weissthank you so much for your help and support it has been a pleasure working with you! And then there are also those helpers whose faces I know very wellEva-Sabine Zehelein, Daniela Kettner, Katharina Worch, Ute Rmer, and Benjamin Betka thanx!

This book is the final result of a long work in progress during that phase in the German academic career called Habilitation. Thus, inevitably, earlier and shorter (and sometimes different in other ways) versions of the chapters of this book have already appeared in various journals and anthologies, and are used here with kind permission:

Portions of the introduction appeared in JOIN, or DIE! The Myth of Wholeness and Visual Strategies of Dismemberment in Early American Political Cartoons, in Colonial Encounters: Essays in Early American History and Culture, edited by Hans-Jrgen Grabbe (Heidelberg: Universittsverlag, 2003), 24362.

Some parts of Chapter 0 were published in Nature | Geophilosophy | Mac hinics | Ecosophy, in Deleuze | Guattari & Ecology, edited by Bernd Herzogenrath (Houndmills, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 122, and others appeared in Leviathans Dilemma: Hobbes and Complexity, in deleuzian events: writing | history, edited by Hanjo Berressem and Leyla Haferkamp (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2009), 20620.

A shorter version of was published in German as Eine Physik der Macht: Phasenbergnge und Turbulenz in der Antinomischen Kontroverse, Boston, 163638, in Machtrume der Frhneuzeitlichen Stadt, edited by Christian Hochmuth and Susanne Rau (Konstanz, Germany: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2006), 91110.

Parts of appeared in The Angel and the Animalculae: Cotton Mather and Inoculation, in Transatlantic Negotiations, edited by Christa Buschendorf and Astrid Franke (Heidelberg: Universittsverlag, 2007), 1324.

A very early version of was published as The Education of Henry Adams: A Physical Theory of Heredity/Heresy, in Organs, Organisms, Organisations: Organic Form in 19th Century Discourse, volume 6 of Literary and Cultural Theory, edited by T. Rachwal and T. Slawek (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000), 15968.

A version of chapter 7 appeared online as Stop Making Sense: Fuck em and Their Law ( its only I and 0 but I like it ), in Postmodern Culture 10, no. 2 (January 2000).

was written with the support of a Christoph Daniel Ebeling fellowship, jointly sponsored by the German Association for American Studies and the American Antiquarian Society, in Worcester, Massachusetts. A heartfelt thank-you to Caroline Sloan, John Hench, Karen Kupperman, and all the other fellows there and thenthe archives were phenomenal!

THIS STUDY EXPLORES the oscillation between the real, material body, and the social body politic in American culturean oscillation that I will call Body | Politic (I use both single quotation marks and italics for emphasis). My topic is how the materiality of the body [its biological, physical, and other systems] prefigures and constitutes models of the social and the political. Thus, this study will necessarily occupy a space between the natural and the cultural, an interdisciplinary space that ranges across and connects the physical and the social sciences, biology and political theory, life sciences and cultural studies. It aims at opening up the traditional figure of the Body | Politic so as to focus on specific materialities that ground this metaphor, asking not primarily about how the Body | Politicas a universal metaphorinscribes actual bodies into a system [the default impact of cultural studies], but about what version of the material body grounds the image of the Body | Politic. One of the guiding questions of this study can be posed as follows: What is the relation between the material body and the anthropomorphic metaphor, or on what kind of body is this metaphor based? Perhaps, ultimately, the concept of the Body | Politic is not only a figure of speech. Maybe there