Demystifying Democratic Autonomy in Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this essay is to decode Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland, or, The Transformation: An American Tale to shed new light on the author’s profound insights into the politico-ontological paradox of American democracy in the era of nation building. Political readings of Wieland have focused on how Brown criticizes either Federalists or Democratic-Republicans by opting one to criticize the other. This dichotomous interpretation overlooks Brown’s keen awareness of the absence of a key democratic principle: autonomous agency that is presumed to constitute both self-government and national unity. This essay proposes that Brown rejects the two competing political ideologies so as to disclose their common inherent dilemma—the inverted logic of causality, which demystifies the notion of democratic autonomy. For Brown, both the Democratic-Republican adherence to self-governing personhood and the Federalist pursuit of national unity are coupled with a fantastical logic which transforms an absent entity into a substantial one by means of believing a given belief in it. This logic, for Brown, serves to reinforce the interlocking notions of selfhood and nationhood in the building process of American Republic in a fantasmatical way.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Brown, Charles Brockden, "Wieland and Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist" Penguin 1991

2 Jefferson, Thomas, "Vol 5 of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private" Derby & Jackson 1859

3 Jefferson, Thomas, "Vol 4 of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private" Derby & Jackson 1854

4 Looby, Christopher, "Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States" U of Chicago P 1996

5 Wolfe, Eric A., "Ventriloquizing Nation : Voice, Identity, and Radical Democracy in Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland" 78 (78): 431-457, 2006

6 Levin, Harry, "The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville" Ohio UP 1980

7 David F. Epstein, "The Political Theory of the Federalist" U of Chicago P 1984

8 Lacan, Jacques, "The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis" Norton 1998

9 Žižek, Slavoy, "Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology" Duke UP 2004

10 Derrida, Jacques, "Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International" Routledge 2006

11 Tompkins, Jane P., "Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1890-1860" Oxford UP 1985

12 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, "Mosses From an Old Manse, vol. 10 of The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne" Ohio State UP 1974

13 Althusser, Louis, "Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays" Verso 1991

14 Jefferson, Thomas, "Jefferson: Political Writings" Cambridge UP 1999

15 Žižek, Slavoy, "Interrogating the Real" Continuum 2008

16 Žižek, Slavoy, "Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out" Routledge 2008

17 Lefort, Claude, "Democracy and Political Theory" Minnesota UP 1988

18 Levine, Robert S., "Conspiracy and Romance: Studies in Brockden Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Melville" Cambridge UP 1989

19 Lacan, Jacques, "Anxiety: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book X" Routledge 2016

20 Chernow, Ron, "Alexander Hamilton" Penguin 2004