Whitman’s Homotextuality, Homopolitics, and Homonationalism 427 hand, the fact that Whitman did not respond all that positively to Symonds’s persistent, though mostly circumspect, probing of his “sexuality” for nearly two decades should alert us to otherwise.22 Whereas Whitman’s later vehement denial, when eventually confronted by Symonds in 1890, of anything sexual in his formulation of comradeship can be circumstantially explained,23 his earlier evasions should not be dismissed likewise but might bespeak a self-conceptualization that was not quite the same as Symonds’s (i.e., that of the modern homosexual). After all, “homosexuality” was but one model vying with many others during the nineteenth century in the race to conceptualize same-sex desire (for some other examples see Bland & Doan [1998: 41-72]), and the model of “homosexuality” was in fact suspected to be one “that would not redeem their [Whitman’s and Thoreau’s] earlier visions so much as fall aslant of them” (Coviello, 2013: 62).24 Even if we bring in the long-existing different periodization for (homo)sexual identities that dates back much earlier, to the late seventeenth century, this periodization also “position[s] these earlier sexual categories—the molly and the sodomite—as highly proximate to, and for some importantly different from, the conceptualization of the homosexual” (Kahan, 2019: 120).25 That 22 For a detailed account of this exchange between Whitman and Symonds as well as Whitman’s other British followers, see Robertson (2008: 139-167). Most of the epistolary documents are conveniently excerpted and weaved into a narrative in Katz (1992: 340-351). See also Sedgwick (1985: 202-218) for a brief but insightful discussion of this cross-Atlantic translation of Whitman into the highly different British context. 23 That is, the denial (and the infamous boast of having six illegitimate children) could be prompted by the growing hostility toward as well as, in some countries, criminalization of same-sex acts near the end of the century, which was clearly referred to in Symonds’s final letter of inquiry (Katz, 1992: 348). 24 For the part on Thoreau, see Coviello (2013: 29-47). 25 For this earlier periodization in the American context, see Millner’s reading (2002), based on Sedgwick’s theorization of “homosexual panic” (1985: 88-89), of Cecil Dreeme, a novel written by Whitman’s contemporary Theodore Winthrop but published even earlier (in 1861) than the aforementioned Joseph and His Friend. See also Martin’s (1990) equally insightful reading of the novel, which
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