The kind of reading we are attempting is incredibly hazardous, especially when faced with a concept like ethnicity, which can be labeled a malleable cultural construct, as Werner Sollors examines in his introduction to The Invention of Ethnicity. Sollors asks, "Does not any 'ethnic' system rely on an opposition to something 'non-ethnic,' and is not this very antithesis more important than the interchangeable content?" (xiv). This particular formulation will probably most inform our reading of Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes (i.e. for this conference, the opposition between ethnic and non-ethnic is the filter through which we will examine the text). What we ultimately do with this particular reading also requires some serious scrutiny. Let's give it a shot: pages 141-144 offer rich material.
When Fuller and her companions visit a Native American encampment on the banks of the Silver Lake (141), they are beset by a rainstorm and take shelter in the lodges. The inhabitants make room for their sudden, snooping guests until the storm ends; Fuller is reminded of another occasion, when she saw some Native Americans in Milwaukee. Fuller describes the two scenes using these words: crowded, ragged, gentle courtesy, extreme poverty, theatrical, picturesque, sweet melancholy eye of the race, homesickness, destitute, begging dance, wild, grotesque, poor coots, gay fantasies of nature, sullen, grand, listless.
Later, on page 143, Fuller describes another sort of encounter with a gentleman "of northern blood, with clear full blue eyes, calm features, the tempering of a soldier, scholar and man of the world, in his aspect; whether that various intercourses had given himself that thorough-bred look never seen in Americans, or that it was inherited from a race who had known all these disciplines." This white man is Other, as well -- however he acquired his demeanor, he is, by all means, not American. The man and his wife, "nurslings of [European] court and city," seem to Fuller unprepared for the harsh realities of life in the American West:
I feel very differently about these foreigners from Americans; American men and women are inexcusable if they do not bring up children so as to be fit for vicissitudes; that is the meaning of our star, that here all men being free and equal, all men should be fitted for freedom and an independence by his own resources wherever the changeful wave of our mighty stream may take him...a man is a man wherever he goes, and something precious cannot fail to be gained by one who knows how to abide by a resolution of any kind, and pay the cost without a murmur. (144)
In the context of this conference's subject matter -- "Otherness and the Narrative of Nation" -- we can make some sort of argument about Fuller diction defining Self against Other, an argument which will fit seamlessly in beside our previous accepted notions. In line with our conclusions about Mariana or about "newness," our argument will run something like this:
Americans, in their need to subjugate the natives and forge a distinct national identity, invent a particular reading of Native Americans and 'foreigners' against which to define themselves. Conflating ethos with ethnos, the American of the 1800s is incapable of approaching the Other objectively -- for example, s/he cannot or will not acknowledge the different value system of Native Americans. Texts like Summer on the Lakes are ultimately the literary face of a manifesto for westward expansion.
Or something like that. Point being, by calling Fuller's description of Native Americans (or of Others, generally) an invention, we automatically invest her description with agency and endow it with a purpose. Agency and purpose it very well may have, but the way we throw that concept around is our invention. This is hazardous because, if we accept the notion that ethnicity (or whatever) is a socio-cultural invention -- as we so obviously do -- then we are ourselves equally susceptible to practicing it.
Not to mention that the perceived ability to go back and reconstruct the invention of cultural touchstones is itself dependent on our assumptions about the recoverability of history -- we privilege our understanding of history and culture just as Fuller did hers.
creation of American ethnicity (conflation of ethos and ethnos, esp.): Cf. Ishmael Reed's suggestion that our modern, race-inflected notion of ethnicity is a peculiarly American invention -- what does that say about "American"?
self-evident universality of the social spectrum from rude to refined -- particular valuation of neatness, good cheer, unanimity, sensitivity, competence
if we decide to use Catlin's pictures in our discussion, what is our basis for comparison? since we're not doing art history, how are we figuring out how to read a painting?
there's a way in which using a "male" form of discourse to describe a "female" experience is inherently subversive (or a "white" form to describe "non-white" experience). There's also a way in which that usage limits the speaker/writer. Aside from this highly theoretical socio-linguistic explanation -- about which we seem quite nonchalant -- what kind of social critique are we actually seeing?