Abstract
We Are Not One People proceeds from a deceptively straightforward premise: to consider the range of separatist discourse in American political history. But this book’s mandate only seems simple because of commonly held cultural assumptions about separatism and secession, and a particular myth of American national identity. As such, the first task of We Are Not One People is to demystify some collective misperceptions concerning the character of separatist groups, and the way these groups are positioned within historical narrative. Michael J. Lee—Director of Graduate Studies at the College of Charleston—and R. Jarrod Atchison—Associate Professor of Communication at Wake Forest University—delineate six interconnected fallacies within mainstream American political discourse about separatism, which frames the question of separatism and secession as (a) definitively settled at the conclusion of the Civil War, with a singular understanding of the nation-state emerging triumphant; (b) exclusively a southern phenomenon; (c) (with a few exceptions) an antiquated notion mostly irrelevant to modern political debates; (d) confined exclusively to reactionary or right-wing groups; (e) easily dismissible as the domain of “fringe blowhards” (p. 31); and (f) exemplified by isolated groups with no discernable overlapping characteristics.
By naming and deconstructing these fallacies, Lee and Atchison reframe this cultural myth in a novel, yet historically grounded, manner. In so doing, they set the foundation for their work’s overarching contribution to public discussion, namely, to understand separatist thought as a spectrum of varied beliefs, causes, actions, and demands—to reconceptualize it “as a durable, flexible, adaptable, and modular political language” that not only permeates American political identity, but also serves as the very foundation of that identity (p. 34). Herein lies the thematic and conceptual strength of We Are Not One People. Through their invocation of “E pluribus pluria as the specter double” of our myth of a cohesive American identity born out of plurality (p. 6), the authors set the stage for a sustained analysis of the persistent power of separatism as a foundational, “multicentury, intergroup, transideological influence” on political thought in the United States (p. 8). As noted by the authors, the Declaration of Independence is a lucid, complex exposition of separation as a logic of political identity formation, a logic that set forth the preconditions for establishing America as “the first modern nation born of secession’” (p. 16).
Building from this, We Are Not One People presents a sustained theorization of the “separatist spectrum” (p. 9)—a continuum “of separatist symbolic activity, from focused and limited acts of refusal to geographic separation, to de facto secession through legal instruments like interposition and nullification, all the way to de jure secession” (p. 195)—within which different groups have operationalized separatism in varying ways throughout the history of the nation. This theorization is achieved by historicizing the concept of separatist thought through the contexts of five specific groups: libertarians, Confederates, Black nationalists, lesbian separatists, and Latter Day Saints. Although distinct in their aims, ideologies, and identifications, these groups—as “distinct type[s] of visceral solidarity against national unity” (p. 11)—represent various points on the separatist spectrum. As such, these groups serve as useful case studies for the book’s ultimate assertion that separatism is not only a definable political language that can be deployed by a variety of claimants; it is, in fact, the defining (and definitively contradictory) national inheritance of American politics. “All told, separatist discourse is, quite ironically, an essential performance of American political identity. That is to say, separation has an American chic, and therefore some performances of American political identity negate the possibility of a nation” (p. 198). A profound assertation worthy of further consideration.
The case studies mentioned above necessarily lead us to consider the methodology employed by the authors. As scholars of political rhetoric and public address, respectively, Lee and Atchison rely on a close reading of the texts and documents on which each group (e.g., libertarians, Confederates) relies for self-definition, and to which they refer when making claims for separation from the national political body. This methodology is supported by the authors’ framework of what they refer to as the Four Dialectics of separatist rhetoric.
In the first dialectic, there is a focus on how each group defines their identity against “the Other” through sustained narratives of exclusionary politics. In the second, the case studies consider each group’s idealized space of existence as defined in relation to (yet invariably opposed to) the nation. The third dialectic is organized around the tension between privacy and publicity in the rhetoric used by separatist groups to achieve withdrawal. Finally, there is an examination of whether a particular group of separatists have “categorized themselves as radicals or restorers” (p. 13). This close reading through a dialectical framework is intended to lead to the central point that “nations are imagined, but they are also unimagined and reimagined, and we can learn much about the durable appeal and enduring fragility of the American figment from those who tried to leave it” (p. 14).
We Are Not One People does not directly address in any sustained fashion the problems of secession and separatism as they manifest in contemporary America. And that is precisely the source of its heft and, what I suspect will be, its sustained influence. Too often, we are confronted with academic arguments that seek to highlight the novelty of contemporary social phenomena as a way of advancing some supposedly original interpretation of the world in which we live. This book, by contrast, uses the present as a point-of-entry for analyzing multiple historical/cultural/textual contexts out of which our contemporary social world arose. In so doing, the authors offer a truly original reinterpretation of the world that brought ours into being.
The selection of case studies and methodology appear to be consistently appropriate to the task at hand, especially with the authors’ acknowledgment that the necessary limitations of publishing led to the exclusion of equally appropriate examples. With such a caveat, the analytical framework set forth in We Are Not One People is sufficiently developed to serve as a model for future analyses. Other researchers might expand the number and type of historical case studies so as to fill in more points along the separatist spectrum. Of course, considering that much of this type of community formation now occurs in networked digital spaces, a sophisticated theorization of media and technological culture would have to supplement this book’s focus on rhetoric.
These are not really criticisms. This is instead to suggest that the work done here by Lee and Atchison is truly groundbreaking; it builds a framework that can be appropriately utilized for meaningful analysis, while also considering in more depth how separatist discourse operates in the contemporary moment.
