Friday, 1 February 2008

Randolph Bourne's "Transnational America"

Randolph Bourne’s writing is inspired by a desire for a cosmopolitan America he feels would be different in spirit and temperament to the countries of ‘old’ Europe; twinned with this being his desire for an “American” identity that is not implicitly Anglo-Saxon. As such this is what inspires him in his call for a “pragmatic”, “realistic” nation, a “trans-national” one. Bourne’s idea of a “pragmatic” America would be a multicultural America; and although it is possible to question this link, it is undoubtedly a link that provides sustenance and motivation to Bourne’s writing.

This questioning of the nature of “American” national identity is evident from the very start of the piece. He describes publicists “stunned” at the “vigorous nationalistic and cultural movements in this country among Germans, Scandinavians, Bohemians, and Poles, While in the same breath they insist that the alien shall be forcibly assimilated to that Anglo-Saxon tradition which they unquestioningly label “American”. It is the questioning of this “unquestionable” aspect of American identity that Bourne proposes, in highlighting what to him is blindingly obvious: that in a nation of immigrants there will always be variety and diversity; and that talk of one homogenous, conformist variable is not in keeping with the realities of the American nation.

The paradox of “assimilation” is also touched upon early on by Bourne, that immigrant groups concentrate amongst their own, as do they “cultivate more and more assiduously the literatures and cultural traditions of their homelands” as they prosper and settle. Immigrants sort refuge amongst their kin – be it Germans in the Midwest; Poles in Chicago; or Italians in New York – in an alien land governed by an Anglo-Saxon consensus. As Bourne saw it the two factors were mutually reinforcing: the more the cultural and elite consensus was explicitly or implicitly Anglo-Saxon, the more new groups would – through a desire for the familiar – tend towards their fellow countrymen, thus perpetuating an unassimilated, patchwork nation.

This is not to mean – as Bourne makes clear – that there has been a failure of Americanisation. For him, it is instead a call to question, or redefine, exactly what “Americanism may rightly mean”. He points out that the earliest colonists did not come over to assimilate, or to “adopt the culture of the American Indian”. They were instead “conservative beyond belief”, and “like every colonial people, slavishly imitative of the mother country. So that, in spite of the “Revolution”, our whole legal and political system remained more English than the English, petrified and unchanging, while in England law developed to meet the needs of changing times”. The idea of “the melting pot” is thus hypocrisy: based on the privilege of English colonial settlers to dictate to subsequent arrivals the character of the nation; and their Anglo descendents subsequent condemnation of the same practices of cultural preservation by other ethnic groups as a refusal to assimilate or worse “un-American”.

The problem as far as Bourne is concerned for those advocates of a distinctly Anglo-Saxon American identity is the empirical evidence of this American identity and its very evident flaws in the shape of the South. He describes the South as an “English colony”, “culturally sterile”, and missing out due to the absence of “cross-fertilisation” that exists in northern states. As far as Bourne is concerned, the South represents a twentieth century version of colonial New England: a land of intense conservatism and cultural homogeneity; his motivation in highlighting the South as an example of backwardness stems from his desire for a “trans-national”, twentieth century, American identity. The South – with its antebellum, aristocratic legacy, married to its Anglo centric elite – is perhaps the antithesis of all that Bourne is railing against.

Diversity is key. Bourne regarded the South as “sterile” not because it was Anglo-Saxon, but rather because it was so chauvinistically Anglo-Saxon as to exclude other cultures to the detriment of southern society as a whole. This is what he means by talking of other cultures remaining “distinct”, yet cooperating within the American nation “to the greater glory and benefit” – it also being telling that he speaks passionately of “emphatically” not wanting the “colourless fluid of uniformity”, yet another appeal to the virtues of multiculturalism, or “trans-nationalism”.

Bourne also highlights a curious paradox in the American national attitude towards immigrants: that of accepting the immigrant who may be escaping persecution, yet insisting on just as narrow a nationalistic tradition in the from of “Americanisation” as he or she may have been seeking to escape from. Moreover, it is not tradition that even provides all immigrants with the comfort of familiarity – only those who originate in the British Isles.

But it is not just the American nation as a whole that Bourne thinks benefit from trans-nationalism. He regards it as more than that; a benefit and form of social welfare to immigrants who would other wise be part of the “flotsam jetsam of American life”, unconnected in anything meaningful sense from a cultural and spiritual core that they can identify with, and thus vulnerable to the “standards of the mob”. Insofar as trans-nationalism is a conservative doctrine it is in this respect. Bourne is compelled to make this argument because he correctly identifies the doctrines of the melting pot as being based upon a heavily Anglo-Saxon conception of society, morality, and values. Just as it was the luxury of the first colonists off the Mayflower to dictate to future pioneers material ways of “American” life, so it was also their luxury to set their metaphysical and spiritual doctrines as the benchmark of American values. “Those who come to find liberty achieve only licence” – Bourne’s most telling phrase with regards to this societal dysfunction masked by the façade of the melting pot, echoing the words of Voltaire, who declared in similar fashion liberty to be “the luxury of self-discipline”.

Bourne is issuing a call for a “federated ideal” of cultures within the US. In the same way that James Madison issued a clarion proclamation of federalist governmental mechanics in Federalist papers 10 and 51, so Bourne is extending the principle sociologically; his argument once more becoming radical – about differentiating America from the “weary old nationalism” of Europe, and becoming a trend setter and “leader” amongst the brotherhood of nations. This federated principle may stem from conservative, Burkean principles of responsibility, stability, and cultural heritage; yet paradoxically they are the handmaiden of a modern, liberal conception of society that seeks as much differentiation from the uniformity of old European societies as possible.

It is the idea of a “federation of cultures” that Bourne uses as an ideal to chip away at the idea of their being an indigenous “American” identity that is non native-American. But it goes further than this. For Bourne the reality is that a pragmatic American must avoid the “scarcely veiled belligerency” of old fashioned European nationalism as an essential part of his citizenship of a “federated ideal”. As he terms it: “medieval codes” are to be avoided at all costs as they lie contrary to the spirit of modernity and the American enterprise; the catalyst for this ideal of Bourne’s being in-part a relativist attitude towards cultures and values. It is not for a modern “pragmatic American” to resort to the violence of old European nationalism in defending the false ideal of a homogenous American culture.

Closely tied to the idea of a federated structure of cultures is Bourne’s reverence for creativity in the social sphere. It is as he asks: “how are you likely to get a more creative America?” As might be expected, one key motivator for this national conception is the need for distinction from Europe – a recurring theme in American literature. Thus Bourne is to plead for America to work out “some position of her own, some life of being in, yet not quite of, this seething and embroiled European world?” This last comment being heavily influenced by the First World War, and the evident folly of such strident nationalism as witnessed in August 1914.
It is in asserting difference from Europe – and in particular, Great Britain – that Bourne can be said to find his raison d’etre; the need for an “assertion” on the part of America that they are truly independent of Britain, politically and culturally. The difference lies, above all else, in the ideals of trans-nationalism and ethnic variety.

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