In “Emancipating Hegel: Synthesis, History, and the Example of Whitman” Russell Sbriglia examines Whitman’s false image of Hegel to support the corrective Todd McGowan makes in Emancipation After Hegel. Here I’d like to point out some things that remain unsaid in Sbriglia’s article.

Recall that the end of history is Europe for Hegel, whereas the end of history is America according to Whitman’s Hegelianism. Whitman thus represses the significance of Europe as the true locus of freedom and modernization and “displaces” it onto his glorious and poetic image of America. But there is also a condensation that takes place in this “displacement”: Whitman’s psychic “displacement” of value from Europe to America overlaps with the historic fact of “displacement” of population and civilization from Europe to America. The historical “displacement” thus substantializes Whitman’s psychic “displacement” and fuels his poetic force and accomplishment. Yet there must be a return of this repressed content, but where is it?

The return of the repressed Europe is as plain as one’s nose: It’s in Whitman’s poem title “Passage to India”. By designating America as a “passage to India”, Whitman views America in the eyes of the European colonists and this proves that his true ego ideal is Europe, not America. His whole panegyric to America is then a vain effort to construct a glorious ideal ego that should be able to conceal the true position of his European ego ideal. Due to the great poetic condensation achieved by Whitman’s “displacement”, this judgment also applies to any and all panegyrics to America, including the most recent instances in popular imagination like “Make America Great Again”. The American Dream is an imaginary alienation that postures wholeness in order to conceal the significance of the true locus of lack and desire, Europe [1].

Moreover, by calling America a “passage to India”, Whitman is secretly identifying not with Europe’s wisdom and foresight, but its stupidity and lack. Recall Slavoj Žižek’s story about his “Native-American” friend preferring to be called “Indian” because this name is at least “a monument to white man’s stupidity”. European colonists invested great amounts of money and resources to be able to traverse the oceans not because they knew something wise and deep about “India” as Whitman’s poem title seems to suggest, but because they were stupid enough to be fetishistically fascinated by the variety offered by Indian trade and commodities.

Whitman’s title seems to offer the actual reality of America as a valid fulfillment of the European wishes and dreams about “India”. But insofar as the validation of this offer must rely on the European lack, Whitman’s true point of identification is with the strange ego ideal of European colonists who were stupid enough to dedicate themselves to the traversal of the oceans for their fetishistic fascinations about “India”. But Whitman must perpetually conceal his strange European point of identification in order to continue to posture wholeness in the name of “America”. Due to Whitman’s great poetic accomplishment that condenses his alienation with that of the Americans, this judgment applies to any and all who are alienated in the images of the American Dream.

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] See “Imaginary Alienation (Posturing Wholeness) and Symbolic Alienation (Posturing Allness)”