Classical Liberalism and American Landscape Representation: The Imperial Self in Nature

Abstract

Here it is shown that ‘vacant nature’ is deployed as sign in Anglo-American landscape representation of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries to support a Cartesian imaginary of spatial extension. The referent of this imaginary is variously denoted as ‘America’ (John Locke), the ‘north west’ (Jefferson), the ‘wilderness’ (Ralph Waldo Emerson), and the ‘frontier’ (Frederick Jackson Turner) but throughout it is essentially the same ‘vacant’ landscape; its function is to produce a site and space of appearance for an imperial self, an isolate pursuing self-extension through commodity production and consumption. This spatial representation—the predecessor of the abstract space of shopping malls, interstates, commercial advertising, global markets, office buildings, and suburbs—is contrasted with ‘place,’ a space shaped by topography, collective memory, and ecological constraint.

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank Piers Howard Stephens, University of Georgia, Philip Cafaro, Colorado State University, and Michal Shapiro, University of Hawaii, for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1. American history is seen as a working out of classical liberal ideas (Hartz, 1957; Jehlen, 1986).

2. The idea of an ‘imperial self’ governs Quentin Anderson's book on American cultural foundations by the same name. See Anderson (1971, p. 14); Sacvan Bercovitch's term ‘separate cosmic selves’ (Bercovitch 1993, 1986, pp. 311, 319); and T. Jackson Lears’, ‘stoic isolato’ (1994) Fables of Abundance (1994, pp. 363–364) bear close comparison.

3. See ‘The transcendentalist,’ in Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Essays with an introduction by Atkinson (1950, p. 93) (hereafter Essays, followed by page number) for Emerson's discussion of his place within transcendental idealism. Paul (1952, pp. 30–31) agrees with this self appraisal.

4. Contrast Neil Evernden's outlook that alienation from nature is ‘natural’ to the human species. He concludes that neoteny, the prolonged, protected existence afforded the young among humans, ultimately severs connection from nature. By contrast, the view here is that a hyperopic view of nature is embedded in the landscape by classical liberalism with the consequence of a culturally produced severance from nature. See Evernden (1993, pp. 122–124) and Lefebvre (1992, pp. 48–53).

5. Arendt's ambivalence about abstract space is also found in Descartes. In ‘The Principles of Philosophy,’ he writes that ‘place is determined by certain immovable points which we imagine to be in the heavens’ (author italics). He then qualifies ‘place’ further by saying, ‘there is nothing that has a permanent place except in so far as it is fixed by our thought.’ See Descartes (1961, p. 341) and the essay on Arendt (Macauley, 1996). I am indebted to Michael Shapiro (2006) for the term perceptual deformation.

6. References are to John Locke (1980) (hereafter cited as 2T, followed by section number).

7. References are to John Locke (1959) (hereafter cited as ECHU followed by book, chapter, and section).

8. For this definition of fetishism I am indebted to W.J.T. Mitchell (1986, pp. 192–193); and Scarry (1986, chap. 5). When applied to ‘capital’ by Karl Marx and to the ‘media’ by Marshall McLuhan, fetishism has the same meaning. Marx alleges that capital possesses fetish power since, though created by labor, once created it transforms labor into a ‘commodity’, a thing made by capital. McLuhan says that the ‘medium’ (the media), an impalpable, omnipresent deity, usurps public speech (the message).

9. The proliferation of invasives as an adjunct to global trade together with its effects on indigenous species is documented by Simberloff (2003, p. 180).

10. The internal relation between artifacts and disembodiment, pain and embodiment, is discussed in the seminal work by Scarry (1986, Part 2).

11. See the commentary by Bercovitch (1993, pp. 311–320) and ‘Self Reliance.’

12. Sacvan Bercovitch uses this term in Bercovitch (1983a). A better term is ‘created nature.’ For an introduction to the literature demonstrating the influence of the idea of the biblical idea of created nature, or nature as artifact, on western thought see Funkenstein (1986); Kaufman (1972); Scarry (1986); Szerszynski (2005).

13. See Janet Coleman, (1992). It should be noted in connection with this literature that America, having skipped the feudal era of history, also skipped Aristotelian natural philosophy. Hence there is little understanding of a telos in nature distinct from and acting as a restraint upon human purposive action. For further discussion see Lee (1986, pp. 129–132); Foster (1935, 1936); Stephens (1999, pp. 3–23).

14. Emerson, indeed, exceeds the biblical writ. In the scriptures from which he draws his inspiration, human production construed as competitive with the divine prerogative of creation is forbidden. Examples are working on the sabbath (Deuteronomy 5:12–16), making idols (Deuteronomy 4:15–32, 5:8–11; Jeremiah 10:3–16), invention of language (Genesis 11:1–9). But Emerson exalts human artifice of every kind and in every circumstance.

15. See Magoc, 1999, p. 63. If vacant nature and the imperial, beholding subject are inscribed within the narrative of the wilderness, the state is (misleadingly) written out. The government was vital at every turn to the development of the western lands which Emerson prized though he does not mention it.

16. Quoted in Fox (1981, p. 5). Fox remarks of Emerson's anthropocentrism, ‘The Concord philosopher, it seemed, could only accept nature in human terms, measured by human scales’ (Fox, 1981, pp. 6–7). Muir looked to Thoreau as a better model than Emerson for an understanding of the relict, aboriginal landscape of America.

17. See Louter (2006). The irony of Emerson's inter-locutory role is that while the poet ‘owns’ the landscape—the cultural landscape to be clear—in the sense that he grasps the biblical mythology being enacted, conversely, capital transforms the physical landscape the poet occupies (and claims to perceive) into an artifact which transparent eyeballs may regard with complacency.

18. The phrase ‘unalienated poet’ is applied to the romantics, ironically, by Cosgrove (1998, pp. 225, 232). For the despoliation of western lands see Limerick (1987, chap. 2); Marsh (1965).

19. On the disembodying effects of artifice see Scarry (1986, Part 2).Compare Leder (1990); Johnson (1987).

20. Cited in Buell (2003, p. 93). By subsuming ‘body’ but not the spiritual, ocular imagination within ‘nature’ Emerson denies what is in fact the case, that there is a connection between perception and embodiment, industrial capitalism and sublime landscape. Once the connection between Emerson's class position and his penchant for sublime nature is brought to light the claim of the transparent eyeball to behold wholly spiritual, cosmic nature falls away and the commodity driven, capitalist culture out of which the claims of the imperial eye (I) is born becomes apparent.

21. Historic accounts of the layout of the national parks and wilderness areas emphasize the construction of many such sites, for example, the rim of the Grand Canyon, the face of Half Dome in Yosemite, the view of Niagara Falls from Goat Island. These prospects join the Yellowstone Gorge as sites supplying certain access to the experience of the sublime.

22. See Mill (1970).

23. A sampling of this critical literature includes the following: Daniel-Berthold (2000); McCarthy (2005); Merleau-Ponty (1964); Soule (1995).