Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A recent critical tradition has made the British imperial and racial anxieties on display in Thomas DeQuincey�s _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_ (1821) difficult to miss: under the influence of a substance whose Chinese and Turkish pedigree was well known, the dreaming English narrator has nightmares that express his horror of �Asiatic� races as �all unutterable slimy things,� and the �Nilotic mud� that engulfs him. In this model, articulated by John Barrell, Barry Milligan and others, the colonizing, absorptive capacity of British imperialism poisons the modern metropolitan self from within. But little critical attention has been paid to American writers, who, fascinated with DeQuincey�s text, appropriated its trope of the psychic transcendence of spatial limits, adapting it to serve the very different cultural requirements of American imperialism. The foremost writer in this tradition was Fitzhugh Ludlow, �the American DeQuincey,� whose texts _The Hasheesh Eater_ (1857) and _The Heart of the Continent_ (1870) linked the trope of exotic mental voyaging to an abiding rhetoric of manifest destiny.

Amy Kaplan has identified a key component of American exceptionalism in an ideal of �boundless expansion� which nevertheless discloses �an anxiety about the anarchic potential of imperial distension�: �If the fantasy of American imperialism aspires to a borderless world where it finds its own reflection everywhere, then the fruition of this dream shatters the coherence of national identity, as the boundaries that distinguish it from the outside world promise to collapse.� This formation closely fits Ludlow�s hallucinogenic and narcotic writings, which revel in apparently unlimited psychic expansion, while confronting the problem of incorporating these immense experiences into a unitary identity. In this way, Ludlow adapts a Romantic concept of drug intoxication as the freedom of imaginative travel and exploration, to the new context of the opening of the American continent. At the same time, he also generates a post-Romantic concept of drug addiction as the mire of exiled abjection, rewriting the freedom of manifest destiny as compulsion. Together, these models evoke an American self keen to use chemical assistance to rove the continent, yet always anxious about falling irredeemably under the influence of the Others it meets there.

Ludlow uses the metaphor of the drug �trip� to link his investigations of an apparently limitless spiritual territory with the pioneering that opened the American continent. Indeed, his travelogue _The Heart of the Continent_, the result of a journey with the Overland Mail to California with the painter Albert Bierstadt, links the sublime, seemingly infinite mental vistas of _The Hasheesh Eater_ to the actual ones of the American west. Reading these texts together, one can see Ludlow adapting DeQuincey�s eastern visions to the paradigmatic exceptionalist experience of the American frontier. The solipsism of drug narratives also echoes the supposedly radical individualism of the American experience of the frontier: under the influence of such drugs, an individual is thought to have a unique subjective experience, but as the genre attests, the imagery of the drug trip shares familiar imperial tropes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: With the war on terrorism the Bush administration has laid the foundation for a distinct foreign policy that is defined by the use of preemptive force in order to avert harm before it can materialize. While the consequences of the Bush Doctrine are still unfolding, one might ask why the administration decided on the strategy of preemptive use of force and whether the courses of action following from it are indeed effective in accomplishing victory in the war on terrorism. In this paper, we will explore the major themes that have informed the Bush administration's foreign policy since 9/11. These include: (1) the exercise of unilateral power that may alienate foreign countries, undermine America's reputation abroad, and damage its efforts in the war on terrorism; (2) the export of American values and influence to shape political outcome in America's image; (3) the firm belief in its virtual monopoly on truth and its unwavering determination to achieve its moral calling; and (4) the unprecedented overextension of both American financial power and its military at the expense of homeland protection and funding for important domestic policies. Although other observers of contemporary American foreign policy have pointed to these themes, we examine systematically how the President's strong religious beliefs have shaped each theme and show that the administration's level of religiousness has led to a revival of the American idea of a Manifest Destiny in American foreign policy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: What happens when demands for sexual freedom take on an imperialist tendency? The privileging of heterosexual practices within U.S. culture has led to the purging of queer behaviors not only from public space but frequently from the private space of the familial home. Proscribed from so much of both private and public existence, queers have had to reclaim spaces for sexual liberty where they could, though ultimately the demand for freedom seeks to proliferate queer sensibilities�what Michael Warner calls �the ethics of queer life��throughout the larger populace. But in the Nineteenth Century, when notions of �manifest destiny� seemed a reality, the possibility of territorial expansion meant a corresponding potential for new spaces of freedom, both in outlying regions and in transitional domestic spaces.
Lucy Holcombe Pickens�s recently recovered novel, The Free Flag of Cuba, relishes in the sexual segregation that resulted from the U.S.�s imperialist ambitions. Ostensibly the story of participants in Narciso L�pez�s 1851 filibustering expedition to Cuba, the novel is in truth a perversion of domestic fiction, exploiting the queer potential of the homosocial spaces produced when men disappear for the front, leaving women home alone. Amy Kaplan�s landmark essay �Manifest Domesticity� elucidated the imperialist orientation of domestic ideology; I would like to build on her ideas, noting the ways that women in Pickens�s novel desire not only the extension of national borders but the conversion of homosocial domestic space into homosexual erotic space. To her mind, the project of manifest destiny and the production of female homosexuality are entirely codependent. Evacuating Cuba of Cubans, manifest destiny allows the play of queer desire both abroad and at home.
In the queer logic of the novel, proper gender performance, rather than reinforcing a heteronormative status quo, leads necessarily to sexual segregation, thereby providing opportunity for same-sex intimacy. While there is no explicit homosexuality in the novel, Mabel, the more radical of Pickens�s two female protagonists, plays the confounding dual role of both policing gender performance and initiating homosexual intimacy. She feels titillation partaking in the discourse of imperialism, and she converts that energy into sexual desire for her best friend, Genevieve. The association between imperialism, female intimacy, and the heroic death of husbands repeats itself throughout the novel. The women�s discussion of marriage and the departure of their future husbands for the filibustering expedition alternates equivocally between expounding the virtues of heterosexual marriage, the necessity of male participation in filibustering, and pleas for intimate female contact. Amidst declarations of her intent to marry and to send her husband off to fight, Mabel continually �kiss[es] the sweet face hushed on her bosom� and repeatedly commands Genevieve to return her kisses; while Genevieve frets over the potential of her fianc� dying in battle, Mabel can imagine no higher aspiration in life than being the widow of a freedom fighter. Ultimately, manifest destiny proves the enabling factor for queer liberation, and, until the hyperbolically comedic ending, intimacy is only enacted in same-sex relationships, enabled by the operations of imperialism.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Research on arms control has neglected democracy as a distinct research subject. The review of nuclear arms control policies of various democracies nevertheless show a considerable variance in the degree of their activities and their inclination to multilateral arms control. Democratic peace theory cannot account for these differences. Moreover, the theory itself is fundamentally ambiguous on the question whether democracies are in general more inclined towards nuclear arms control than other forms of governance. This ambiguity becomes further evident when looking at the writings of Immanuel Kant. The concept of the “unjust enemy” can already be identified in the early Kantian writings where he distinguishes between lawful and lawless states. This concept also helps to explain the differences in the degree of nuclear arms control activity. The paper compares different democracies which posses or do not possess nuclear weapons. The very nature of nuclear weapons as instrument of deterrence explain why certain states continue to rely on this weapon category. Democracies nevertheless also differ in their threat perceptions. While a distinct concept of the “unjust enemy” can be identified in some democracies with a general disinclination towards nuclear arms control, pro-active states rarely rely on such forms of political justifications. Different roles and identities present the fundamental reason for the variation in nuclear arms control policies. They also shape the attitudes towards non-democracies and the values ascribed to nuclear weapons.