Lecture 1 - Intro

Question 1

What’s a rebus?

Answer 1

a puzzle device that combines the use of images with individual letters to depict words or phrases

Question 2

Name the 6 key concepts and terms discussed in the first lecture?

Answer 2

• History and its emplotment
• Hyperreality, simulation, and simulacra
• Imagined communities
• Narrative and nation-building
• Manifest Destiny
• Frontier

Question 3

Theoretical considerations: History and its emplotment (Hayden White)

Answer 3

• historian Hayden White employes categories of literary theory for the analysis of historiographical writing
• he argues that historiography shapes a series of events, recorded for instance in chronicles or annals, into a narrative with a beginning, a middle and an end –> narrative
• in another step, to make a story intelligible and meaningful as history, the historian makes it conform to their preferences, consciously or unconsciously –> unconscious bias

Question 4

What are the preferences White names narratives need to conform to?

Answer 4

Mode of Emplotment
romance
comedy
tragedy
satire

Mode of Argument / Explanation
formist (idiographic)
organicist
mechanistic
contextualist

Mode of Ideology
anarchist
conservative
radical
liberal

Question 5

Argument or Explanation (preferences by White)

Answer 5

• the formist mode of argument sees individual historical units or entities as self-contained and relatively autonomous
• the organicist mode assumes that individual units are determined by their place in a larger whole and by a common spirit
• the mechanistic mode looks for laws of cause and effect connecting historical phenomena
• the contextualist mode relates units to each other against a common background or frame of reference.

Question 6

Emplotment (preferences by White)

Answer 6

• romance celebrates the triumph of the good after trials and tribulations
• comedy is socially integrative and celebrates the conservation of shared human values against the threat of disruption
• tragedy stresses the irreconcilable element of human affairs, and laments the loss of the good necessarily entailed when values collide
• satire sees only meaningless change in human life; human affairs display no pattern, and for the most part are governed by folly and chance.

Question 7

How are those preferences (Mode of Emplotment / Argument or Explanation / Ideology) used according to White?

Answer 7

• any of the modes of emplotment can be combined with any of the modes of argument and any of the modes of ideology.
• White maintains that all history written in the conventions established in the nineteenth century (which extend to the present day) defines itself by reference to these categories, i.e. that this set of options exhausts the possibilities of historical writing (or at least of conventional narrative history).
• this has the important corollary that there is no further, “scientific,” “correct,” neutral way of writing history which could be found outside this grid
• rather, historians are “indentured to a choice” among these options. They cannot not choose.
• within the grid, no single mode has a closer relation to truth than any other. Thus a sequence of events can be narrated as a tragedy or as a comedy, satire, or romance. There is no way of proving that one of these is the right way of narrating it.
• historical writing employs tropological pre-figuring: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony
• metaphorical imagination makes connections by seeing likenesses; the metonymic, by making a part represent or stand in for any other part of a whole; the synecdochic, by making the part represent the whole; the ironic mind is sceptical about whether making connections is possible at all

Question 8

Theoretical considerations: Hyperreality, simulation, and simulacra
What does Hyperreality mean?

Answer 8

• state where simulations and representations of reality become so pervasive and convincing that they begin to replace or obscure the original reality they are meant to represent
• represents a condition where the distinction between reality and simulation collapses, creating a world where the simulated becomes more real than the real itself. This concept is particularly relevant in the context of the American West, where manufactured narratives and carefully curated experiences have shaped perceptions of the region for over a century
• according to Baudrillard, Disneyland induces the belief in the existence of a reality that lies outside it. Yet this reality no longer exists; rather, it belongs to the hyperreal order
• hyperreality was defined by Baudrillard as “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality,” a representation, a sign, without an original referent

Question 9

Theoretical considerations: Hyperreality, simulation, and simulacra
What does simulation mean?

Answer 9

• Umberto Eco described the emergence of an age of simulation after visiting imitations and replicas on display in various museums and tourist attractions
• Eco noted that the distinction between real worlds and possible worlds is undermined by these simulations and that these attractions were aiming to establish themselves “as substitute for reality, as something even more real”
• “Eco suggests that we have become so adept at manufacturing signs of the ‘real’ that they have become an acceptable, even desirable, substitute for the ‘real’ we can no longer have”

Question 10

Theoretical considerations: Hyperreality, simulation, and simulacra
What does simulacra mean?

Answer 10

• Simulation (1981), Jean Baudrillard, represent a critical stage in the process of hyperreality, where signs and representations have become completely divorced from their original sources. This detachment from the real results in a world where meaning is constantly shifting and ultimately elusive, leading to a sense of disconnection from authentic experience.
• Baudrillard contended that the simulacrum is surrounded by the “desert of the real”, which he used as a metaphor to designate simultaneously the origin and the product of hyperreality by which, in a manner of speaking, the real was devoured

Question 11

Theoretical considerations: Imagined communities

Answer 11

• the concept developed by the political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson
• in his study on nationalism, Anderson describes a nation as a socially constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group
• imagined communities are created also by the media, by:
• targeting a mass audience that is created as ‘the public’
• the dissemination of images
• the perpetuation of stereotypes
• all of which further the individual and collective relationship to this imagined community
• “nation” was defined by Anderson as “an imagined political community”:
• it is imagined “because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion”
• members hold in their minds a mental image of their affinity as an “imagined community”, which may be stimulated through external events, such as notions of a common enemy or sports events
• finally, a nation is a community because,
• “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.”

Question 12

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
What is nation-building and what does it do?

Answer 12

• the constructing or structuring of a national identity, using the power of the state, is referred to as nation-building
• nation-building aims at political stabilization through the unification of the people within the state
• it can involve the use of propaganda or other means to promote social harmony and economic growth
• significantly, nation-building includes the creation of national paraphernalia: symbols (such as flags or coats of arms), anthems, national languages, and national myths (Smith 1986).

Question 13

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
How narrative connected to nation-building?

Answer 13

• narrative is a specific form of dynamic reality construction which is relevant to nation-building
• narrative organizes our experiences and interactions by framing them: “Framing provides a means of ‘constructing’ a world, of characterizing its flow, of segmenting events within that world” (Bruner 1990).
• the “story” is a typical form for framing, structuring, and remembering our experience in such a manner that the story and the knowledge it contains coincide
• stories are constitutive for memory
• the story told by framing represents a form of experience and memory organization that results in “affect regulation” (Bruner 1990) and identity construction (Gergen 2009)

Question 14

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
According to Jerome S. Bruner, construction of the form of dynamic reality consists of?

Answer 14

 framing
 feeling and identity formation
 interactive actualization
 language use

Question 15

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
Narratives

Answer 15

• exchange of narratives with others accounts for a person’s emotional world but also for their self-image, self-definition, and identity
• it should be noted, that as such, narratives are also open to delusion, self-deception, and imagination
• either way, narratives give meaning, they literally “make” sense.
• in an interactive process of actualization, stories become public and community property and thus negotiable
• in this way, a culture creates meanings, which in turn actualize that culture and further give it shape
• culture is understood in this context as a process that exists in the present between previously negotiated meanings and future-oriented intentions
• narrative language use is concrete, metaphorical, allusive, and sensitive to context (Bruner 1990)

Question 16

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
What are the four dimensions describing narrative sense-making according to Bruner?

Answer 16

• sequential
• indifferent to fact
• canonical
• dramatic

Question 17

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
Four dimensions describing narrative sense-making –> sequential

Answer 17

• “a narrative is composed of a unique sequence of events, mental states, happenings involving human beings or actors” (Bruner 1990)
• it should be noted, however, that chronological sequentiality does not sufficiently characterize narrative.

Question 18

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
Four dimensions describing narrative sense-making –> indifferent to fact

Answer 18

• a story can be both real or imaginary
• its strength lies in its own chronology and internal structure
• there is no difference between a historical story or a fictional story (White)

Question 19

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
Four dimensions describing narrative sense-making –> canonical

Answer 19

• stories can make differences within a culture explicit, deal with conflicts, and re-examine community meanings
• they can accommodate impossible logic in an acceptable way
• stories can make differences within a culture explicit, deal with conflicts, and re-examine community meanings
• they can accommodate impossible logic in an acceptable way

Question 20

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
Four dimensions describing narrative sense-making –> dramatic

Answer 20

• a story can move, transport or sweep along the listener or reader as well as the spectator

Question 21

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
What is the root metaphor?

Answer 21

• it has been suggested that narrative represents an ideal “root metaphor” for political psychology that transcends disciplinary boundaries to link mind and society in a way that offers solutions to political dilemmas
• the notion of a “root metaphor” was described by Stephen C. Pepper as follows:
  “A man desiring to understand the world looks about for a clue to its comprehension. He pitches upon some area of common-sense fact and tries to see if he cannot understand other areas in terms of this one. The original area then becomes his basic analogy or root metaphor.” (Pepper 1942) According to Pepper, some root metaphors “prove more fertile than others, have greater power of expansion and adjustment” and generate “relatively adequate world theories.” (Pepper 1942)

Question 22

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
Sense-making

Answer 22

• narrative is a story that involves sense-making for minds in society with one another; it is useful for political psychology because it provides an analytical frame that speaks to people’s need for personal coherence and identity as they work for collective solidarity and shared meaning (see Hammack and Pilecki 2012).
• Phillip Hammack and Andrew Pilecki suggest that T. R. Sarbin’s concept of a narratory principle – “that human beings think, perceive, imagine, and make moral choices according to narrative structures” (1986) – can be applied to an understanding of “psychological phenomena of interest to political psychologists, including political cognition, decision making, ideological identification, collective beliefs and emotions, and motivation to engage in various forms of political behaviour, including political violence.” (2012)

Question 23

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
Narrative and identity

Answer 23

• more specifically, social representations of history are a source of “narratives that tell us who we are, where we came from and where we should be going. It defines a trajectory which helps construct the essence of a group’s identity, how it relates to other groups, and ascertains what its options are for facing present challenges.” (Liu and Hilton 2005)

Question 24

Manifest Destiny; what is it?

Answer 24

• refers to the conviction that the US was destined to expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean
• coinage of the term is credited to the journalist and politician John L. O’Sullivan who first used it in the summer of 1845 in connection with the annexation of Texas
• he reiterated the phrase during the Oregon border dispute with Britain in an editorial to The New York Morning News on 27 December 1845
• Important terms: Providence and Liberty

Question 25

Manifest Destiny: John L. O’Sullivan

Answer 25

• O’Sullivan saw the US as the ‘hand of God’, as having a ‘unique religious mission and special moral status’, which is different to Thomas Jefferson’s purely political concept of the ‘Empire of Liberty’. O’Sullivan infused with religion; Jefferson purely political without religious aspects
• the religious understanding of the American mission promoted by O’Sullivan draws on an established tradition of American providential thinking. World-historical and transformative significance of Puritans that believed their settlement in North America would transform everyone else
• 1839  O’Sullivan articulated his belief in the singularity of the US, its divine sanction, and the manifestation of progress in “The Great Nation of Futurity”

Question 26

What is the “American Progress” image?

Answer 26

• Publisher George A. Crofutt commissioned the illustrator John Gast to design a visual rendering of “American Progress”. The image, first published in the April issue of Crofutt’s Western World in the following year, 1873, has become notorious as an allegory for the concept of Manifest Destiny. (Lady Liberty floating West)
• The settlement and development of the US are conceived here as a teleological development.
• The evocation of the “drama” of the civilizing process of progress corresponds to Bruner’s (1990) “dramatic” dimension of narrative sense-making

Question 27

Theoretical considerations: Narrative and nation-building
Frontier

Answer 27

• frontier was in effect the space where Manifest Destiny was acted out
• the frontier refers to the shifting zone of contact with Native Americans and (later) Mexican settlers during the westward expansion of the US, which began with colonial settlements at the east coast in the early seventeenth century and was effectively concluded with the admission of the last territories as states in 1912 (New Mexico and Arizona)
• politically, westward expansion of the US peaked from the beginning to the end of the nineteenth century with the Louisiana purchase in 1803 (from France) and, most notably, the annexation of Texas in 1845 as well as the acquisition of California, New Mexico, and Arizona after the Mexican American War of 1846–48
• in 1862 the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railroad Act contributed to the intensification of the settlement of the western territories
• the establishment of communication lines – pony express (1860), telegraph (1861), and the first transcontinental railroad (1869) – supported the settlement and assimilation of the (former) frontier territories in the west

Question 28

When were the last territories added to the US and which where they?

Answer 28

• 1912
• New Mexico and Arizona

Question 29

When was the Louisiana purchase?

Answer 29

• 1803 from France

Question 30

When was Texas annexed?

Answer 30

• 1834

Question 31

When was the American War?

Answer 31

• 1846-48

Question 32

What year was the pony express invented?

Answer 32

• 1860

Question 33

What year was the telegraph invented?

Answer 33

• 1861

Question 34

What year was the first transcontinental railroad?

Answer 34

• 1869

Question 35

What year were the Apache Wars?

Answer 35

• 1849-86

Question 36

What year was the Colorado War?

Answer 36

• 1863-65

Question 37

What year was the Snake War?

Answer 37

• 1864-68

Question 38

What year was the Red River War?

Answer 38

• 1874-75

Question 39

What year was the Great Sioux War?

Answer 39

• 1876

Question 40

What year was the Wounded Knee massacre?

Answer 40

• 1890

Question 41

Frontier thesis

Answer 41

• American historian Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932)
• settlement and colonization of the rugged American frontier was decisive in forming the culture of American democracy and distinguishing it from European nations
• he takes the ideas behind Manifest Destiny and uses them to explain how American culture came to be. The features of this unique American culture included democracy, egalitarianism, uninterest in bourgeois or high culture, and an ever-present potential for violence.
• a new product that is American. At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. Thus, the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines
• American character was decisively shaped by conditions on the frontier, especially the abundance of free land, the settling of which engendered such traits as self-reliance, individualism, inventiveness, restless energy, mobility, materialism, and optimism

Question 42

Theoretical considerations: summary

Answer 42

• the concepts of Manifest Destiny and the frontier have been introduced as constitutive of constructions of the American West originating in the nineteenth century and frequently productive to the present
• they demonstrate how the “Great West” has been imagined as a vehicle for Americanization and has, in fact, been transformed into a paradigm of Americanness
• with a focus on some theoretical approaches – concentrating on narrative and nation-building; imagined communities; history and its emplotment; and hyperreality, simulation, and simulacra – we have, moreover, stocked our tool box for subsequent explorations of constructions of the American West