Mario and the Magicians

#23, December 6, 2003

Mario and the Magicians

I had been asked to write a paper for an edited volume called After the Imperial Turn. My intention had been to write a piece (which I believe I am still working on) that linked Progressive social reform back to Emancipation predicaments, beginning with Daniel T. Rodgers’ Atlantic Crossings and winding its way back to Eric Foner’s Nothing But Freedom. A car accident intervened, however, and I was laid up during the Spring of 2001 recovering from a broken neck. The deadline was approaching fast and I could not imagine how I was going to finish the essay I had promised to write. Fortunately, two things came together to help me produce a paper, albeit a rather different one from the one I had initially conceived of writing. First, the report from the OAH-NYU "Internationalizing American History" project arrived on my doorstep, and secondly, some rather effective psychedelic painkillers allowed me to cut through all my inhibitions and write down what I really thought of this mailing. Within a couple of days I had written "Making the World Safe for American History," a rather biting response to the OAH-NYU pamphlet, and an essay that possibly fit the projected volume better than my original idea would have done. I provide an excerpt below to give you a taste of it, though the meat of the critique is available only in the Duke University Press volume (2002) edited by Antoinette Burton.

Like myself he was half American, and here I must resist the temptation to digress on a fascinating topic: England’s intellectual debt to America. Nearly all the remarkable Englishmen of the last fifty years have a strong seasoning of Yankee blood. Great is the temptation to dwell on Winston Churchill and develop a theme which has not yet received proper attention. Where would the modern poetaster be without T.S. Eliot? But I shall forbear: perhaps we have suffered too much from racial theorists.

Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete[1]

Never judging a book by its cover is not always to be trusted as a sound rule. For the Report La Pietra, judging by the cover seems only fair, and for most people it may be a time-saving device. It is fair since the lavishness of the pamphlet’s presentation is intended to make an impression, albeit a positive one. What follows is the impression it made on me:

The pamphlet’s cover presents us with the title of the pamphlet, an interesting photograph of Villa La Pietra (with Greco-Roman statues on the imposing gate), and mention of sponsorship by the OAH. Right from the get-go, this identification between a project on internationalizing the study of American history and an Italian villa seems rather an unfortunate lapse. When we learn, by turning to the Preface, that this connection is by design not misfortune, we certainly have to wonder whether we need to read further. This is from the preface:

The title [of the report] is taken from the Villa La Pietra, where the international body of historians who participated in the project met. It was thought appropriate, given the theme of the project, to meet abroad, and the availability of meeting facilities at Villa La Pietra, New York University’s magnificent center in Florence, Italy, made that possible.[2]

On the surface, convening a meeting overseas for a conference on internationalizing of American History seems like a sensible plan. In fact, though, internationalizing American History might be more effectively demonstrated by endeavoring to bring out the global buried within the local. Of course, attempting this, perhaps by holding the conference in one of the less attractive locations in the United States that may be thirsting for our international band’s dollars, might not be quite so appealing to a group of professionals used to meeting only in Sheratons and Hiltons, not to mention Adams Marks.

But even if we accept the need for a foreign venue, we need to ask ourselves whether this was indeed either the most convenient or the cheapest one? It was certainly one that most Americanists would find attractive and to which they would wish to travel. It was also readily available through the auspices of NYU, which had been given the building for the purpose of holding international conferences. But, even if it were truly the most convenient (which I doubt), is convenience always to override the importance of avoiding a symbolic Euro-American bias that such a venue might signify?

More than convenience, however, the preface continues by letting us know of the villa’s own symbolic credentials:

In fact, the recent history of the villa illustrates in its own way the transnational theme of the conferences. The villa was given to NYU by Sir Harold Acton, whose father had purchased it after marrying an American woman from Cleveland who brought to the marriage the resources that made the purchase possible. And it was this American connection that prompted Sir Harold Acton to offer the villa to an American university, which dedicated it in part to be a center for international academic conferences.[3]

So, dare we suggest a subconscious desire to revive the great Anglo-American marriage lurking beneath this enterprise? If this is the extent of our internationalization –- an Italian villa, purchased by what appears to be an Englishman, with American money –- then we haven’t advanced very far from the beginning of this century, when such arrangements fed the dreams of many an Anglo-American racial supremacist: a Theodore Roosevelt, a Winston Churchill, or a W.T. Stead (all of whom were chart busters in the globalization business).[4]

But, if we listen closely, we may hear rumblings of a text lying dormant beneath the weight of this preface. First, we may learn from Sir Harold’s memoirs that, in fact, the Mitchell money that bought La Pietra was from Chicago rather than Cleveland, which, as the “capital of the West” back then, may perhaps do more for our globalizing sensibilities than Cleveland.[5] As Sir Harold might have said, it is so much more delicious an idea to conjure with. And, when we add to this the strong probability that some of the Hawaiian money flowing into the family was coming (directly or indirectly) from sugar plantations, then our taste buds really just tingle with excitement. And, in the wake of this foppery, for which Sir Harold was renowned, we are not surprised to learn that our host was the model for Anthony Blanch, that “prancing faun” Evelyn Waugh’s character in Brideshead Revisited. When we factor into our consideration Waugh’s provision of a South American mother for Blanch, racializing Sir Harold’s aesthetic, as well as all the imperial imaginings that wandered through the minds of Sebastian Flight and Charles Rider, then we do have a delightful feast, the smells of which may indeed emanate from within the walls of villa La Pietra.[6]

But the magic of the transnational embodied in Sir Harold’s aesthetics is present neither in the cover of this report, which gives no signal beyond the Euro-American, nor in the material that lies within. For, this conference was constructed on a foundation made up of that steely alliance of Academy and Foundation – what we will for convenience dub the Foundation-Academy-Complex (FAC). Scholars of un-American history will remember that it was the FAC which brought us (with heavy State Department and CIA backing) Area Studies. Indeed, the FAC was able to establish conformity over intellectual endeavors in quite formidable ways, as witnessed in the emergence of the Chicago (St. Valentine’s Day) School with its distinctive and largely hegemonic approaches to urbanization, immigration, ghettoization and development, among other things. One can see this beginning to be replicated in the case of internationalizing history. Those organizing the La Pietra conference are donning the mantle of “godfather,” so that as new global and international history centers are established in universities around the United States their positions will be filled either by those scholars who were participants in the La Pietra meetings, or by people recommended from within this family of scholars. New publications in this area will also seek the imprimatur of the family’s inner circle, and we can predict that Rethinking American History in a Global Age will receive sufficiently heavy marketing to give it iconic status.[7] The Foundations, meanwhile, are busily looking for the alternative to their earlier, now-failed ventures in area studies, and are ready to fund anything coming downstream that appears programmatic.[8]

Let’s be honest now. My real beef with the OAH’s conference on internationalizing the study of American history at La Pietra was that I wasn’t a participant. Had I been invited, let’s face it, I would be endorsing the La Pietra report in a snap, like all the other worthies on the participant list. Maybe – maybe not!