Response Papers for 10/8 (Alice Hu)

Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways;” Halttunen, Confidence Men and painted Ladies; and Chauncey, Gay New York

It is the tendency of modern perceptions of the past to assume that identities, racial, sexual, or otherwise, were much more hamstrung and confined than they are today—we see moments in history such as the Civil Rights Movement or women’s liberation or gay liberation as pivotal moments that freed minorities or subcultures from their previous oppressed status. But, as George Chauncey points out in his Introduction to his book Gay New York, to assume so is to subscribe to “the Whiggish notion that change is always ‘progressive’ and that gay history in particular consists of a steady movement toward freedom” (9). But in many cases, as both David Waldstreicher and Chauncey argue, the groups that we think of as having only just been liberated in fact enjoyed a period of considerable freedom long before they were, as Chauncey says, escorted to the closet.
Identities, as both Waldstreicher and Chauncey suggest, in many cases seemed much more fluid in earlier times. Where even now modern perceptions struggle with a dichotomy between “black” and “white,” these identities were certainly fluid enough for numerous runaway slaves or servants to “pass” as white; furthermore, many black Americans did not even need to “pass” for anything—the identity of “black” was in the early history of the United States not synonymous with that of “slave,” while many European immigrants were hardly considered “white” at all, and in many cases were indentured servants. In the same way, sexual identity for homosexual men in New York in the beginning of the 20th century was not a dichotomy between “gay” and “straight:” rather, it existed as a spectrum, ranging from female gender identification to sexual preference for men. It is not until external forces pressured society to “closet” these groups: only when the American economy exploded did it come to rely almost solely on black slaves, especially in the South, and only in the wake of Prohibition was homosexuality seriously marginalized and stigmatized.
Karen Halttunen presents a slightly different argument: she does not propose to revise anything. Instead she rather traditionally traces the development of certain stereotypes—that of the confidence man—in relation to the changing face of the American family and city throughout the 19th century. As the influence of families and local clergy fell away, and as more men ventured out alone into cities at younger ages, the insidious image of the confidence man developed as both a cautionary tale for these young men, as well as a way of attempting to guide these young men in a transitional stage to leading a wholesome life.
It is true that Waldstreicher and Chauncey engage much more with the historiographical tradition in their fields than does Halttunen—which is more fitting to their purposes. Both authors intend to argue with an overwhelming misconception that the forward progression of history means progress towards greater liberty and acceptance for minorities and subcultures. Both Waldstreicher and Chauncey fight with something of a phantom general public whom they seek to disabuse of this “Whiggish notion:” while they do not overtly refer to any group or particular people who subscribe to this view, they make it clear that these views are by and large prevalent, even without citing much actual evidence for it. While Waldstreicher relies almost exclusively on his primary evidence to speak his case, Chauncey very openly credits those historians before him who have laid the groundwork for his own research. But all three authors engage with their primary sources in much the same way: they rely on firsthand accounts and extracts from writings of the period to establish the identities that they discuss, whether that is the identity of free black workers in the early nineteenth century, confidence men, or openly homosexual men in New York. Their archival work is admirable, but runs the risk of privileging the under-represented groups too much. For instance, Waldstreicher bases his conclusions largely on the writings of slave masters about their runaway slave, and so he is reconstructing slaves’ identities through a number of refractions. In the same way, Halttunen reconstructs the identity of confidence men through the wildly exaggerated speeches of the clergy—although she tempers this reconstruction with some very well-placed police reports that corroborate the clergy.
These articles offer both refreshing takes on the traditional historiographical approaches to subcultures and engaging work with primary sources. Waldstreicher and Chauncey, particularly, seek to subvert not only popular misconceptions about certain groups, but also seek to explode an entire conception of history and progress, which I find particularly admirable and inspiring, although, at the same time, they do so on sometimes tenuous evidence. Halltunen, while she does not share such revolutionary aims, equally admirably uses well-rounded evidence tempered both by secondary account and concrete primary evidence to reconstruct a comprehensive and possibly more accurate identity.