The Heart of Civilization

The Heart of Civilization

  This article surveys, argues for, and advances the recent postnationalist turn in American Studies scholarship by focusing on the emergence and persistence of the Anglo-American discourse of sentimental imperialism. Drawing specifically on the writings of Lord Shaftesbury (Sensus Communis) and Lydia Maria Child (Hobomok), the article suggests that the long history of Anglo-American sentimentalism needs to be understood in relation both to the rise of liberal strategies of governmentality in the late seventeenth century and to the increased focus on the body and its sensations as a ground for political debate in the early eighteenth century. Sentimental imperialism, in this context, roots the abstract universalism of Anglo-American liberalism in the particularities of local practices of embodiment. In turn, these specific articulations of liberalism"s (globalizing) claims and its (localizing) procedures underwrite the theory and practice of Anglo-American imperialism. The article also suggests that scholars and critics of post-nationalist American Studies should be interested not simply in how this form of sentimental imperialism operates, but also in mapping some of its less predictable effects and genealogies.