Fantasies of Identification. Ellen Samuels
my life. Meanwhile Andi Gladstone, Anne McLaughlin, and the other women of the Ithaca Breast Cancer Alliance reminded me of the inseparability of activism, research, and writing and taught me not to fear my future.
I had the tremendous good fortune to arrive at the University of California, Berkeley at the inception of its disability studies program, and over the next eight years I flourished in the company of brilliant and outrageous crip scholar-artist-activists like Georgina Kleege, Marsha Saxton, Devva Kasnitz, Neil Marcus, Anne Finger, Cathy Kudlick, Corbett O’Toole, the late Paul Longmore, and many others. I owe more than I can say to Sue Schweik for guiding me through those years and beyond as the most generous mentor and friend anyone could hope for. Sam Otter opened my eyes to the rigorous joys of nineteenth-century American literature, while Ula Taylor kept me honest and attentive to the many intersecting meanings of race and disability. In seminars and exams and in the hallways of the department, Celeste Langan, James Turner, Cathy Gallagher, Colleen Lye, Hertha D. Sweet Wong, Bryan Wagner, and Patricia Penn Hilden taught me to be a thorough and irreverent researcher and writer, while Len von Morzé, Gretchen Case, Marja Mogk, and Anna Mollow helped keep the ground level under our collective feet.
Since coming to the University of Wisconsin, I have discovered the joys of belonging to two academic departments in which respect is combined with incisive thinking and a good dose of humor. In the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, I am grateful for the support and mentorship of Judith Leavitt, Janet Hyde, Frieda High Tesfagorgis, Lynet Uttal, Nancy Kaiser, Aili Tripp, Jane Schulenberg, Mariamne Whatley, Nancy Worcester, Jill Casid, and especially Christina Ewig, Judy Houck, Finn Enke, Cyrena Pondrom, Julie D’Acci, and Jane Collins. My compatriots and companions in this journey, Pernille Ipsen, Keisha Lindsay, Jenny Higgins, and Chris Garlough, are the wisest and most generous colleagues anyone could wish for, and throw a mean dance party to boot.
In the English Department, I rely upon Russ Castronovo, David Zimmerman, and Jeff Steele to keep me current with the tides of American literary studies, and Christa Olson, Jordan Zweck, Colin Gillis, Aida Hussen, Lisa Cooper, Timothy Yu, and Robin Valenza to bring happiness at the appropriate hours. Susan Stanford Friedman told me hard and necessary truths about writing a book, and this project is immeasurably better for her guidance. Elizabeth Bearden arrived just in time to teach me everything I needed to know about tenure dossiers, swordcraft, and graceful recoveries. My senior colleagues Lynn Keller, Susan Bernstein, Sara Guyer, Leslie Bow, Anja Wanner, Rob Nixon, Anne McClintock, and Karen Britland have been generous with their time, support, and words of wisdom. At UW, I have also been lucky in the friendship and intellectual companionship of Linn Posey-Maddox, Christie Clark-Pujara, Steve Kantrowitz, Nan Enstad, and Karma Chávez. Tom Jones contributed his art, his insight, and his sympathetic ear at a crucial stage in this project, for which I am deeply grateful.
It has been my tremendous luck to participate in the UW Disability Studies Initiative with Walt Schalick and Teryl Dobbs as colleagues, and Steve Stern and Cathy Trueba as our guardian angels. I am grateful also for the support of Alta Charo, Linda Hogel, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, and Rob Asen. Eunjung Kim and Jenell Johnson are the glue that holds it all together and two of the smartest and kindest people I have ever known.
I could never have made it without my brilliant and fierce community of disability scholars and activists. Love always to Alison Kafer, whom I met at my very first disability conference and who remains my intellectual muse and dearest conference companion. Cindy Wu and Robert McRuer read drafts, offered advice, and provided moral support at the most crucial stages. Gratitude and appreciation beyond words to Petra Kuppers, Mike Gill, Kim Q. Hall, Susan Burch, David Serlin, Mel Chen, Jennifer James, Martha Stoddard Holmes, Simi Linton, Rosemarie Garland Thomson, David Mitchell, Lenny Davis, Bethany Stevens, Therí Pickens, Anita Mannur, Eli Clare, Samuel Lurie, Robin Stephens, Margaret Price, Carrie Sandahl, Jim Ferris, Alice Sheppard, Kristen Lindgren, Ann Fox, Sunny Taylor, Sami Schalk, Riva Lehrer, Nirmala Erevelles, Kim Nielsen, Jeff Brune, Jenifer Barclay, the late and sorely missed Laura Hershey, and many others whom my crip brain may not recall but my crip heart assuredly holds dear.
My friends within and beyond academia have been my strength and sustenance through the decade of writing that produced this book. Rob Henn has been family for twenty years and my most faithful Boston spouse since my arrival in Madison (and his name means “chicken”). Laura Linton is the sister of my heart and my rock in every storm. Ilene Sperling and Joy Goldsmith are there in thick and thin, even (and especially) when we’re getting into trouble, and Emily Bender and Hannah Doress nourish body, spirit, and Star Trek soul. Thank goodness for Kathryn “Busfriend” Herzog, Noelle Howey, Chris Healy, Jay Williams, Timnah Steinman, Anoosh Jorjorian, Kevin Miller, Saraswati Bryer-Bass, Amy Morrissey, Margaret Carne, Sara Greavu, Rebecca Targ, Sarah Stickle, and Joanne Chao. Jonathan Zarov arrived at the end, and also the beginning.
Charlie Samser has not read a word of this book, but he is the living heart of it nonetheless. Jordan Samuels, together with Carol Madey, Maddie, and Ben, can always be counted on to support, succor, and entertain, while Joan Mohr Samuels inspires me equally with her dedication to the environment, her kindness, and her apple pie. Eric Riutort, Kevin Riutort, and Helen Madorma know me in a way no else can, and Gail Bearden is my second mother and culinary hero.
My father, Stephen Mitchell Samuels, was never prouder of me than when he admitted he couldn’t understand a word of my manuscript. My mother, Myra Lee Samuels, earned her Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley forty years before I did, when women faculty were few and far between, especially in the mathematical sciences. The two of them raised me with an equal passion for social justice, written words, and intellectual vigor, and this book is dedicated to their memory.
Finally, I must thank the many disability aides without whose assistance this book could literally never have been written: Katie Ramos, Paul Hurh, Len von Morzé, Caroline Roberts, Max Camp, Stephanie Rytilahti, and Anna Vitale. Ari Eisenberg also provided invaluable research assistance. Thank you for your hands, your eyes, your legwork, your brilliant minds, and most of all for your patience and dedication.
For early sponsorship of this project, I am grateful for a Chancellor’s Opportunity Fellowship at the University of California, the Phi Beta Kappa of Northern California Graduate Fellowship, and the Andrew Vincent White and Florence Wales White Scholarship of the University of California Humanities Research Institute. For crucial support to complete this book, I thank the American Association of University Women, the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the Vilas Life Cycle Professorship at the University of Wisconsin.
An earlier version of chapter 1 first appeared in MELUS: Journal of the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 31.3 (2006) and is reprinted by permission of the journal.
Portions of chapters 2 and 3 first appeared in Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 8.1 (2006) and are reprinted by permission of the journal.
Portions of chapter 5 first appeared in the Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth Century American Literature (2012) and are reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
Introduction: The Crisis of Identification
Nations provoke fantasy.
—Lauren Berlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life
In the mid-nineteenth century a crisis began to emerge within modern nations regarding the identifiability and governability of the individual bodies making up their bodies politic. This crisis of identification was driven by a multiplicity of factors, including greater geographic and class mobility; urbanization, colonialism, and expansion; the beginnings of the welfare state; and challenges to racial and gendered hierarchies. Intersecting with these material developments, and no less essential to the making of the crisis, were ontological concerns about the naming and classifying of persons as they moved within and across categories of meaning. The shift in European countries from social worlds based upon local and personal affiliations to those that Michael Ignatieff has called “societies of strangers” (87) was even more dramatic and problematic in the United States, with its tremendous geographical breadth, racial and class diversity, federalist political structure, and uneasy allegiance to ideals of equality and democracy predicated upon the exclusion