View source for Haunted by Empire

{{Infobox book
| name           = Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History
| author         = Ann Laura Stoler
| publisher      = Duke University Press
| pub_date       = May 2006
| pages          = 568
| isbn           = 082233724X
| image          = [[File:Haunted by Empire.jpg|200px|alt=Cover]]
}}

Edited by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Laura_Stoler Ann Laura Stoler], '''''Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History''''' is a compilation of essays that examine the historiography of colonialism and imperialism in the United States and its geographic periphery. The broad purview of this work stretches from early colonial America, to the westward expansion of the frontier and the antebellum period, and the United States' imperial expansion into Latin America and the Pacific during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In these contexts, the featured authors, ranging from anthropologists to historians, engage with Stoler's suggestions for revision in the study of North America's colonial and imperial past. Her methodology focuses on "the intimate and public spaces of United States history; how relations of empire crash through and then recede from easy purview, sunder families, storm sequestered spaces, and indelibly permeate ... institutions and the landscapes of people's lives." (1) Furthermore, she calls for a geographic and disciplinary comparative approach to studying intimacy (i.e., self-identity, sexuality, race, family), placing significant consideration on the "social imaginaries of high and low, colonial subjects, agents, and architects that spanned continents and traversed empires and national borders." (4) These elements, inspired by the works of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault Michel Foucault] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Said Edward Said], ground ''Haunted by Empire'' as a challenge to American historians and the scholarship on colonialism and imperialism produced at the time. The end goal of these essays then is to argue against narrow examinations of colonial institutions in American history that rely heavily on sources produced by colonial institutions alone to base historical arguments. Instead, as Stoler puts it, colonial regimes should not be viewed as "hegemonic institutions," but rather as "imperfect and even indifferent knowledge-acquiring machines" with the purpose of cataloging difference, maintaining hierarchies of power, and penetrating intimate spaces to determine similarity and difference when comparing the colonized to the colonizer. (55) In this context, Stoler and company examine the colonial regimes of the United States through a broad timeline to compare similarities in rule over the racial, sexual, and gendered intimate sphere.

Stoler's call for reform stems from a push by academics in the humanities to examine socio-cultural spaces and question definitions of colonialism found throughout the history of the United States and empire at large. Moving past paradigms of American exceptionalism, she focuses instead on how students of American history explore colonialism and where it is geographically and chronologically situated. She cites several examples that attempt to answer this two-part question: where is the intimate sphere in American imperialism and why is early American colonialism (roughly 1700s to mid-1800s) not discussed as well? For the first part, Stoler finds that [https://www.english.upenn.edu/people/amy-kaplan Amy Kaplan's] 1993 ''Cultures of United States Imperialism'' illuminates this problem in defining the American imperial experience during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kaplan's argument against viewing American imperialism as a "mere episode in American history, little more than a twenty-year blip on the democratic and domestic national horizon" served to shift the conversation instead towards the relationship between colonized and colonizer and how these categories formed. (26-27) Stoler situates this academic shift not only in the field of history but also in sociology and anthropology, encouraging a multi-disciplinary perspective to try and answer this historical question. In unpacking the parameters of these issues, particularly the concept of the intimate in both early colonialism and later American imperialism, Stoler also points to feminist scholarship as a contributing field. The "interlocking of sexual and racial patterns of dominance" in historical studies of imperialism helped bring these intimate spheres of identity, arguably Stoler's central methodological point, to the fore. (30) The culmination of these developments is what she proposes as a new set of strategies, ones that focus on the periphery and metropole of empire and how they affect one another internally. In the vein of Foucault's theories on hegemony and bio-power, she focuses on everyday domination both at the top and bottom of imperial hierarchies as a promising site for innovative scholarship on American imperialism.

The book centers around this core thesis, with three sections focusing on 1) Stoler’s method of comparison and points of convergence along American colonial frontiers, 2) how hierarchies of power penetrated intimate settings of family and identity, 3) who received the privilege of producing knowledge within an imperial framework, and 4) a final section that provides commentary on how her methodology may expand into other periods. For example, the first section features [http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/people/dsal007 Damon Salesa's] "Samoa's Half-Castes and Some Frontiers of Comparison," where he argues that the combined presence of multiple imperial powers and Samoan half-castes with mixed ancestry serves as a point of comparison. He states that Samoa was a joint imperial frontier that depended not on large colonial bureaucracies, but instead colonizing individuals that embodied the interests of empire through private and public action on the ground. Half-castes also posed a question of what Salesa calls "strategic intimacy," further developing Stoler's concept of the intimate by discussing how imperial powers on Samoa categorized and 'civilized' this mixed population to meet their political agenda. (72) In the second section, [http://www.history.upenn.edu/people/faculty/kathleen-m-brown Kathleen Brown's]  "Body Work in the Antebellum United States" explores a broader timeline for the roots of America's imperial character, focusing on how household labor navigated domestic culture both as servants and dwellers of a home space during the antebellum period. Her focus on personal wealth, the physical presence of servants in upper-class white households, and the ever-present hierarchies of power and race helped forge the American concept of civilization and respectability. Finally, in the third section, [https://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/people/profile/1285/Alexandra_Minna_Stern Alexandra Stern's] "An Empire of Tests: Psychometrics and the Paradoxes of Nationalism in the Americas" shows how intelligence tests and racial science in the early twentieth century exemplified Foucauldian bio-power, as these tests generated statistical information on populations and helped highlight difference that then mobilized into concrete structures of dominance. Stern also touches upon Stoler's concept of the intimate self by examining how demographers and scientists traced and justified their judgements on the human 'interior' through lenses of psychology or germ theory. Following the main three essay sections, the concluding section features [https://as.nyu.edu/history/people.linda-gordon.html Linda Gordon's] "Internal Colonialism and Gender" as a wrap up to the key ideas presented in the book. She comments on the trajectory of the "internal colonialism" social theory in American academia and its struggles when presented with topics of gender or kinship. (427) However, she also highlights the strengths of Stoler's model in examinations of individual experiences and relationships within larger structures of colonialism and imperial domination.

These are a few examples that serve to provide a broad overview of the work and show the multidisciplinary approach Stoler calls for in her introduction. However, is this approach successful in its goal of not only encouraging a variety of perspectives but on examining and comparing intimate bodies? Overall, she makes a compelling argument for engaging in a historical exploration of how constructs of race, gender, sexuality, and more developed within the confines of imperial societies both at the top and bottom of social hierarchies. However, even though her commendable historical ethnography garners great praise and followers in the academy, she fails to adhere to some conventions in the field of history. For instance, her interchangeable use of the term 'imperial' and 'colonial' is confusing and, to further exacerbate the problem, she does little to clarify these in her two essays in the introduction. Her strengths in history lie in her methods, namely the previously mentioned use of comparisons, points of geographic and cultural convergence, and the importance of individual experiences and context in any given colonial situation. Stoler emphasizes the individual historical actor, "what they conceived as equivalent contexts, glossed over as common features or marked off as wholly uncommon ground,” and how this reveals much about the categories developed by the colonizer or colonized. (6) Yet, it is the sheer scope of this project that is the weakest part of the work. She casts a broad geographic net -- perhaps too broad for historians who may prefer a more specific zone of study. ''Haunted by Empire'' is no exception, as the authors within try to cover both the U.S. proper, its peripheries, and other countries and peoples related to American colonial interests during any given period. Also, the chronological scope of the work is immense, with writers tackling everything from early colonial America to the twentieth century. Making points of comparison along such vast distances of time and space are bound to be fraught with issues, especially if these essayists seek to make arguments about continuities in American colonialism. A more centralized theme and period would have benefited this book greatly, perhaps limiting the essays to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century or an examination of a few key territories and the American mainland. However, it nonetheless succeeds in testing the strength of Stoler's method in a wide variety of imperial settings within the American colonial experience. Stoler’s use of historical comparison and focus on individual experiences is an applicable methodology that enlightens future scholarship and helps revive socio-cultural history as a practical means of exploring the American imperial project and the intimate experience of the individual historical subject caught within those power structures.

[[Category:Ann Laura Stoler]]
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[[Category:Book Summaries]]
[[Category:Nineteenth Century United States]]
[[Category:Twentieth Century United States]]