Placing Hoganson in a larger body of texts

In many respects I agree with the points made by the previous two posts. As Steven notes, some of the texts gendered analysis seems to be less fully formed that more contemporary scholarship. I also agree that the definition of honor seemed to shift through the text. But I do not necessarily believe that either of these points detracts from the values of such a text (not that these posts were necessarily arguing that point either). Hoganson explores the fine distinctions of the gendered rhetoric of policy debate for both the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. She argues that both the constructed hierarchy of gender and the threats to that hierarchy were omnipresent in all policy decisions and cultural rhetoric. Hoganson offers masculity as a conerstone to understanding the justifications for these imperial conquests, thus creating a new site of historical focus and analysis. I think this is where the innovation and importance of this text lies.

Placing gender, as a focal point of analysis for the understandings of U.S. imperial culture seems to be a crucial point of analysis for this work, what that seemed to be fairly groundbreaking at the time (the text is 12 years old). Although this text was not the very first to do so, this move seemed to spark a host of texts that address both the impact of gender on American foreign policy at the turn of the century and the changing negotiation of gendered constructs in American culture. Using a Foucauldian discursive analysis and shifting the academic gaze to a gendered lenses has allowed historians to both study the impact that these social constructs have had on Imperialism, but also the way that foreign policy has also helped to create and reinforce a stratified gendered binary. Many scholars have followed in this vein and offered a gendered analysis of U.S. imperial cultures.

Ann Laura Stoler and Amy Kaplan are two of note whose work complicates the relationship between nation building, imperial expansion and the creation of a normative gendered binary.

Perhaps one of the strengths of this book is that in not completely answering all of the questions regarding manliness and U.S. imperialism, it sparked a great future research on the subject, research and work that has been especially crucial in American cultural studies. In my particular background of study, this book seems to be highly influential to many other scholars. And although I agree that not all of Hoganson’s points are totally focused, the book seems to be important in initiating a great deal of future analysis that utilizes this gendered focus.

See you all tomorrow.
-John