The Unspeakable Whiteness in Whitman's Democracy: Empire and the Limits of American Literature

Abstract:In this article I use Toni Morrison's literary criticism in "Unspeakable Things Unspoken" and "Playing in the Dark" as models for readings of Walt Whitman's "Democratic Vistas," "Ethiopia Saluting the Colors," and "Reconciliation." These readings are done in service of a reflection on American literature as a field of study at our current historical moment in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that an American literature curriculum organized by an impulse toward Black liberation rather than canon diversification must relinquish temptations to "remake" the American literary canon to open up possibilities for other ways of conceptualizing democracy after American Empire (drawing on Morrison's charge that "Canon-building is Empire-building").