Whitman’s Homotextuality, Homopolitics, and Homonationalism 417 Hence, in the first section of this essay, I will seek to demonstrate how the Whitmanian textuality was both prehomosexual and para-homosexual—in the sense that most of what is now regarded as homosexual representation in Leaves of Grass was actually nothing out of the ordinary at the time of its publications. Yet a certain homotextuality can still be argued because the volume indeed bears uncanny signs of resemblance to this laterpredominant formulation, most evidently in the two levels of signification (one open, one coded) that inform the “Calamus” cluster poems concentrated on intra-male intimacy. That is to say, the proposed practice of parallel reading does not work just for historical contexts, but for Whitman’s texts as well, and the two are deeply correlated. In the second section, the essay will turn to Whitman’s promotion of such (transgressive) intra-male intimacy as the (hidden) core of his programmatic politics of democratic comradeship. As Whitman himself unequivocally declares in “Preface, 1876, to L. of G. and ‘Two Rivulets,’ Centennial Edition”:5 To this terrible, irrepressible yearning, (surely more or less down underneath in most human souls)—this never satisfied appetite for sympathy, and this boundless offering of sympathy—this universal democratic comradeship—this old, eternal, yet ever-new interchange of adhesiveness, so fitly emblematic of America—I have given in that book, undisguisedly, declaredly, the openest expression. 5 Originally titled “Preface” and opening Two Rivulets—the accompanying volume to the 1876 edition that contained new poems and essays (including Democratic Vistas)—it was later retitled thus as preface to the two volumes together. To simplify citations, I have not listed all separate pieces as independent items in references: while individual titles are given in the text, the citation refers only to the collection in which they can be found. Besides, since most materials now can be conveniently accessed on the indispensable Walt Whitman Archive (hereafter Archive), I have cited all Whitman’s works from their earliest published editions to avoid the anachronistic conflation of later revisions with the original version.
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