A Common Emerson: Ralph Waldo in an Ethnohistorical Context

Abstract

Proposes to denaturalize or render local the tradition of reading Emerson from Parrington to the present by asking a fundamental question: What are the limits of Emerson’s thinking, the limits of his representativeness? Articulates various facets of Emerson as a figure committed in his writing to the communal, both in the theory and practice of social action, and in a nascent theory of extended kinship, which he terms “hospitality.” Believes what inhibits the development of this theory of kinship is Emerson’s inability to think ethnohistorically, that is, to imagine, in contradistinction to his hero Montaigne, any positive content for indigenous cultures, specifically Native American and African. Concludes that what conditions this failure is his unswerving commitment to Western imperialism as a civilizing force, even as he opposes the very institutions (slavery and the Indian removals) that are the ground of this ideology.