ABSTRACT
In Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said writes that “cultural forms like the novel … were immensely important in the formation of imperial attitudes, references, and experiences” (xii). Not only does the novel play a role in structuring the subjectivities of those in imperial nations, but the practice of empire reciprocally structures the generic form of the novel: “Without empire, I would go so far as saying, there is no European novel as we know it” (Said 69). The nineteenth-century American novel functioned similarly, but with a slightly different valence. While engendering the “‘structures of feeling’ that support, elaborate, and consolidate the practice of empire,” they also tended to figure empire not as “imperialism,” but rather as national expansion and, in fact, the fulfillment of a national destiny (Said 14). Said notes that in American writing there is a “ferocious anti-colonialism, directed at the Old World,” which paradoxically “shows a peculiarly acute imperial cast” (63). This paradox became all the more potent—in its potential to unravel a foundational national ethic—when, at the turn-of-the-century, the United States pursued relationships with Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Hawaii that were quasi-colonial and indisputably imperial. A cultural crisis presented itself: were the structures of attitude and reference toward “the West” and the “frontier” transferable and adaptable overseas, such as in the Pacific? How would national narratives about race, gender, class, and citizenship change as a result of—and as legitimating discourses for—this new imperialism?
