436 EURAMERICA strangers.41 In terms of Whitman’s hidden and likely more sexualized homopolitics, Coviello’s nationalism interpretation is obviously too disembodied and desexualized to qualify as its coded message (it is more like an exposition, albeit inaccurate, of Whitman’s open political agenda); in contrast, Kateb’s and Frank’s cruising/ citizenship line of thinking, with its fuller attention to (homo)sexuality, seems more on the mark. To drive home what Whitman’s homopolitics may actually look like in this line of interpretation, Chris Packard’s much more explicit rendering may be helpful: In Whitman’s new, revolutionary, sexualized nation, joyful sex should be the responsibility of every citizen . . . . Temporary intimate encounters between autonomous men, continuous cycling of sexual contact between citizens ought to start the love that will eventually grow to define the future nation. Being American ought to mean having multiple partners, temporary liaisons, and bonds between such lovers based on easy physicality, not emotional entanglements—regardless of gender, class, or profession. (2006: 80, my emphases) Although whether this envisioning actually evinces Whitman’s subscription to the utopian sexual arrangement espoused by the French socialist Charles Fourier and practiced by American free-love activists is still open to question,42 this interpretation nevertheless 41 As strangers used to pose unknown dangers and therefore needed to be identified as either friends or enemies quickly, the indifference to them that has become possible only with the arrival of modern civil society is praised as one of the latter’s major achievements; see Silver’s (1990) exposition of this view as held by such classical proponents of civil society as Adam Smith, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, and Adam Ferguson. 42 The reason why this suggestion is not considered seriously here is mainly due to the lack of substantial textual evidence. For what I regard as a highly speculative case made for it, see Moon (2006). For a succinct exposition of Fourier in this particular respect, see Calvino (1980/1997: 213-255).
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