5.6. Pluralizations

Contexts

  • mass immigration late 19th/ early 20th century → strong ethnic groups and identity

  • Same time: national sentiments in wake of WWI and xenophobic sentiments in 1920s

    → melting pot → not progressive, assumption of willigness to shed culture

→ Early concepts of cultural pluralism (counter to melting pot)

→ Growing body of ethnic and immigrant literature

Randolph S. Bourne 1886-1918 “Trans-national America! 1916

  • melting pot = failure

  • differentiates between old elite immigrants (conservatism, obstruct social advance) vs. new immigrants (bring energy) → obvious contrast

Vision of future America

  • Retaining distinctivess of native cultures → more valuable and interesting

He wants:

  • pluralism, diversity

  • multiculturalism

Horace M. Kallen 1882-1974

  • German-Jewish background

  • rejects melting pot

  • 1924 invention of term “cultural pluralism”

  • Rejection of undue assimilation → not shedding cultures

  • American democracy needs to be defined as pluralistic and transnational

  • Cultural pluralism as symphony and prchestration (American society conists of diverse voices playing together)

→ still American exceptionalism, problematic

Ethnic writing an/as modernism

→ not distinct, overall movement

  • recasts modernism, reconnects modernism with ethnicity

  • diversity as part of modernity

  • ethnic lit. participated in development of modernism

Different aspects, e.g.

  • Native American lit.

  • Asian American lit.

  • Harlem Renaissance lit.

  • …

Example Mary Antin “promised land” 1912

  • jewish american perspective, immigrant perspective

  • about Americanization, America includes diversity

Example Native American perspective “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” 1921 by Zitkála-Sá

  • violent practices and consequences define perspective