Heterosexual white male: Some recent inversions in American cultural history

Journal of American History

Volumn 92, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 136-157

  Wickberg, Daniel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33749403793     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3660528     Document Type: Review

References (144)

1. The outpouring of African American historiography, particularly slave historiography, in the 1970s was voluminous. Some foundational texts are Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1977);
2. Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (New York, 1976);
3. Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York, 1974);
4. Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (New York, 1978);
5. John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York, 1972);
6. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974);
7. George Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community (Westport, 1972);
8. and Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York, 1979).
9. Martin Mull and Allen Rucker, The History of White People in America (New York, 1985);
10. The History of White People in America, dir. Harry Shearer (Home Box Office, 1985) (videotape; MCA/Universal Home Video).
11. The literature on the history of whiteness is substantial and growing. See David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 1991);
12. Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1990);
13. Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York, 1995),
14. Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race: Volume One; Racial Oppression and Social Control (New York, 1994);
15. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass., 1998);
16. and Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation In the South, 1890-1940 (New York, 1998).
17. For assessments of the literature, see David W. Stowe, "Uncolored People: The Rise of Whiteness Studies," Lingua Franca, 6 (Sept.-Oct. 1996), 68-77;
18. Peter Kolchin, "Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America," Journal of American History, 89 (June 2002), 154-73;
19. and the symposium "Scholarly Controversy: Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination," International Labor and Working Class History (no. 60, Fall 2001), 1-92.
20. On the concept of a "usable past," see Warren I. Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1984), 7-26.
21. For the term "normal history," an equivalent to what Thomas S. Kuhn called "normal science"-the practice of working within accepted paradigms, rather than seeking to create new paradigms-see Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 28-31.
22. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962).
23. Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York, 1996), 1-10;
24. Bryce Traister, "Academic Viagra: The Rise of American Masculinity Studies," American Quarterly, 52 (June 2000), 274-304.
25. On the issue of the political commitments of scholars, see Evelyn Nakano Glenn, "Gender, Race, and Class: Bridging the Language-Structure Divide," Social Science History, 22 (Spring 1998), 29-38.
26. An exception to the fragmentation by field conceptualizes studies of whiteness, masculinity, and heterosexuality under the rubric of "privilege": Michael S. Kimmel and Abby L. Ferber, eds., Privilege: A Reader (Boulder, 2003), 1-10.
27. Dana Frank, "White Working-Class Women and the Race Question," International Labor and Working Class History (no. 54, 1998), 80-102;
28. Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins, eds. A Question of Manhood: A Reader in U.S. Black Men's History and Masculinity (Bloomington, 1999);
29. Allan Bérubé, "How Gay Stays White and What Kind of White It Stays," in Privilege, ed. Kimmel and Ferber, 253-83.
30. For an explanation of whiteness studies as a response to recent social and political developments, see Adolph Reed Jr., "Response to Eric Arnesen," International Labor and Working Class History (no. 60, Fall 2001), 69-80.
31. John E. Toews, "Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience," American Historical Review, 92 (Oct. 1987), 879-907.
32. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, 1979);
33. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 1989);
34. Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology (Cambridge, Mass., 2002);
35. Clifford Geerrz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973);
36. James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Mass., 1988);
37. Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn, eds., Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies (New York, 1992);
38. Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Cambridge, Mass., 1991);
39. Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis, 1989);
40. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, 1990);
41. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley, 1990);
42. Roberto Unger, The Critical Legal Studies Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1986);
43. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies (New York, 1992).
44. Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York, 1996);
45. Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1996);
46. Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1996);
47. Laura F. Edwards, Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction (Urbana, 1997);
48. Rebecca Edwards, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era (New York, 1997).
49. The turn toward gender in the 1980s is best represented by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York, 1985).
50. Note the change in subtitles in these consecutive editions: Peter Gabriel Filene, Him/Her/Self: Sex Roles in Modern America (New York, 1975);
51. Peter G. Filene, Him/Her/Self: Sex Roles in Modern America (Baltimore, 1986);
52. Peter G. Filene, Him/Her/Self: Gender Identities in Modern America (Baltimore, 1998).
53. E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York, 1993);
54. Kimmel, Manhood in America; Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1990);
55. Mark C. Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, 1989);
56. Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen, eds., Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America (Chicago, 1990);
57. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women (New York, 1991);
58. Susan Faludi, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (New York, 1999);
59. Butler, Gender Trouble; Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, 1995);
60. John F. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: the White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity (New York, 2001).
61. Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.: A Documentary (New York, 1976);
62. John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (Chicago, 1983);
63. Martin B. Duberman, About Time: Exploring the Gay Past (New York, 1986);
64. Allan Bérubé, Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York, 1990);
65. Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 1991);
66. Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York, 1993);
67. Esther Newton, Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town (Boston, 1993);
68. John Howard, Men like That: A Southern Queer History (Chicago, 1999);
69. Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 (Chicago, 2000).
70. On early gay history and its relationship to what later became queer theory, see Lisa Duggan, "The Discipline Problem: Queer Theory Meets Lesbian and Gay History," 1994, in Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture, by Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter (New York, 1995), 194-206;
71. and John D'Emilio, The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture (Durham, 2002), 210-30.
72. The tension between gay history and queer theory is present in Martin B. Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey Jr., eds., Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (New York, 1989).
73. John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York, 1988);
74. Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons, eds., Passion and Power: Sexuality in History (Philadelphia, 1989).
75. Jonathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (New York, 1995);
76. Randolph Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London (Chicago, 1998);
77. Mary Louise Adams, The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality (Toronto, 1997);
78. Karen Dubinsky, The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls (New Brunswick, 1999).
79. For the general interest of queer theory in heterosexuality, see Calvin Thomas, Joseph O. Aimone, and Catherine A. F. MacGillivray, eds., Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality (Urbana, 2000).
80. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York, 1994).
81. C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge, 1951);
82. John Hope Franklin, Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988 (Baton Rouge, 1989);
83. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 (New York, 1935);
84. Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America (Dallas, 1963);
85. Winthrop Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968);
86. George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914 (New York, 1971);
87. Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (Princeton, 1987);
88. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Pfontation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill, 1988);
89. Brenda E. Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South (New York, 1996);
90. Joel Williamson, Crucible of Race: Black/White Relations in the American South since Emancipation (New York, 1984);
91. Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and "Race" in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca, 1998);
92. Matthew Pratt Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900-1940 (Cambridge, Mass., 2001);
93. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization; Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line (Cambridge, Mass., 2000);
94. Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Fathers House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (New York, 1992).
95. For the transition from stressing the unity of women as historical agents to foregrounding the plurality of women's experience, cf. Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck, eds., A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women (New York, 1979);
96. and Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki L. Ruiz, eds., Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History (New York, 1990).
97. The most widely known statements of "difference" feminism are Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1982);
98. and Mary Field Belenky et al., Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York, 1986).
99. For the antiessentialist position, widespread in feminist thought, see Denise Riley, "Am I That Name?": Feminism and the Category of Women" in History (Minneapolis, 1988).
100. Edward Stein, ed., Forms of Desire: Sexual Orientation and the Social Constructionist Controversy (New York, 1992);
101. Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 1-34.
102. Carl N. Degler, In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (New York, 1991).
103. Peter Novick titled chapters on the intellectual history of the historical profession during the 1970s and 1980s "Every Group Its Own Historian" and "The Center Does Not Hold." See Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (New York, 1988), 469-572.
104. Thomas Bender, "Wholes and Parts: The Need for Synthesis in American History," Journal of American History, 73 (June 1986), 120-36.
105. On sociological holism, see Louis Dumont, Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective (Chicago, 1986), 1-19.
106. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. W. D. Halls (New York, 1997), 283-87.
107. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1964).
108. On hegemony, see Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 25-49;
109. and T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review, 90 (June 1985), 567-93.
110. Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, 1977);
111. Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, 53-76; Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York, 1981);
112. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, xvi;
113. Steven Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
114. Barbara J. Fields, "Ideology and Race in American History," in Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, ed. J. Morgan Kousserand James M. McPherson (New York, 1982), 143-77;
115. Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," American Historical Review, 91 (Dec. 1986), 1053-75;
116. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, 1978);
117. D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters;
118. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York, 1936);
119. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York, 1966).
120. Noel Ignatiev and John Garvey, eds., Race Traitor (New York, 1996). The reference is to the TV program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, prod. Dorothy Aufiera, Christian Barcellos, Francis Berwick, David Collins, Amy Introcaso, David Metzler, Michael Williams, Scout Productions (Bravo, July 15, 2003).
121. Ignatiev and Garvey, eds., Race Traitor, 10.
122. Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, 1998), 25;
123. Jordan, White over Black;
124. C. Wright Mills, "The New Left," in Power, Politics, and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz (New York, 1963), 256.
125. Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History (Philadelphia, 1990).
126. D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, xii; Katz, Invention of Heterosexuality, 181, 41.
127. For an earlier version that denies the capacity of language to invent or structure social and psychological "realities," see Jonathan Ned Katz, "The Invention of Heterosexuality," Socialist Review, 20 (Jan.-March 1990), 7-34.
128. The notion of marked and unmarked categories is more prevalent in sociological than historical analysis. For a sociological version of the inversion discussed here, see Wayne Brekus, "A Sociology of the Unmarked: Redirecting Our Focus," Sociological Theory, 16 (March 1998), 34-51;
129. George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia, 1998), 1.
130. Blassingame, Slave Community, 317;
131. Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (New York, 1984), xiv-xvi.
132. Adams, Trouble with Normal, 170.
133. Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 2001), 14-43.
134. Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (New York, 1989);
135. Martin J. Burke, The Conundrum of Class: Public Discourse on the Social Order in America (Chicago, 1995);
136. Burton J. Bledstein and Robert D. Johnston, eds., The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class (New York, 2001);
137. Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (New York, 2001);
138. Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York, 1986);
139. Philip Gleason, Speaking of Diversity: Language and Ethnicity in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore, 1992);
140. John A. Andrew III, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick, 1997);
141. Mary C. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the COP (Chapel Hill, 1995);
142. Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York, 2001);
143. Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, 2001).
144. On this point, see Daniel Wickberg, "Intellectual History vs. the Social History of Intellectuals," Rethinking History, 5 (Nov. 2001), 383-95.