Whitman’s Homotextuality, Homopolitics, and Homonationalism 441 praised almost everything existing and happening in the nation, and glorified them all as, like himself, standing for America and therefore beautiful and great. This endorsement, unfortunately problematic from today’s point of view, included what the US government had been doing for some time then and what it continued to do during the nineteenth century, mainly the westward expansion and the relentless invasions of other countries (Mexico and those of Native Americans) for that purpose in the name of Manifest Destiny, whose most disturbing consequence was no doubt the gradual but definite decimation of the Indigenous population. As the major events of this process (such as the Indian Removal as well as continuous wars and massacres) took place precisely during his adult lifetime, Whitman in particular could not be excused by his ignorance of them as he had served as clerk, albeit for only half year (in 1865), in the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior and even received Indian representatives in person. Therefore the fact that Whitman remained largely reticent on the Indigenous situation tells a great deal about his stance on the US practices of imperialism and racism at that time,51 even though he was also reputed to have assumed an Indigenous persona and, sometimes, lamented the disappearance of Native American civilizations.52 51 As Ed Folsom summarizes it in a comprehensive chapter on Whitman’s attitudes toward the Indigenous Americans: “The Indians, Whitman knew, had been abused and treated unjustly, but he also subscribed to the notion of progress and social evolution and believed that it was inevitable and ultimately valuable that America extend itself from sea to sea, in service of the ‘larger result’ of the ‘whole body of the States.’ As always with Whitman, union was the overriding good; the only clear thing was the certainty that the Indians themselves would be ‘wiped out’” (1994: 57). It is crucial to recognize Whitman’s settler colonial mentality as Meiners astutely critiques it, which is also revealingly evident in his stance toward the Australian Aborigines (Griffiths, 2012). 52 For the former, see Folsom (1994: 62-65); for the latter, see, e.g., Whitman, “The Spanish Element in Our Nationality” (1892: 387, originally published in 1883). See also Nolan (1994) for a monograph that both supports these claims and argues for the indigeneity of Whitman’s poetics, linking him further to Pablo Neruda, which will concern us in a moment.
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