Misgivings: Melville, Race, and the Ambiguities of Benevolence
Misgivings: Melville, Race, and the Ambiguities of Benevolence
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疑虑：梅尔维尔、种族和仁慈的模糊性
DOI：
10.1093/alh/12.4.685
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发表时间：
2000
影响因子：
0.4
通讯作者：
S. Ryan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
S. Ryan
在这些引文的配对中，我希望强调世纪中期美国文化中社会责任和怀疑之间的关键紧张关系。莉迪亚·玛丽亚·蔡尔德的声明既反映了帮助苦难的热切愿望，也反映了无数文化权威的意识，他们警告说，按这种冲动行事可能弊大于利。与此同时，“傻瓜”这句警句也指出了诡计的普遍性和吸引力，尽管人们尽了一切努力来规避或揭露它。巴纳姆和他的竞争对手提出，怀疑欺骗可能是一个有趣的来源，也就是说，如果我们把他们的企业的流行作为证据，尽管人们普遍知道许多随之而来的欺骗。然而，美国人倾向于认为他们的善行中的诡计是令人不安的，甚至是恶性的。一个人可能被欺骗去帮助不值得帮助的人，这常常使人们对慈善行为感到焦虑。
In pairing these citations, I wish to highlight a crucial tension in mid-nineteenth-century US culture between social responsibility and suspicion. Lydia Maria Child’s statement reflects both a fervent desire to help the suffering and an awareness of the myriad cultural authorities who warned that to act on such impulses might do more harm than good. At the same time, the “sucker” epigram points to the pervasiveness—and the appeal— of trickery despite all efforts to circumvent or expose it. In the kinds of public amusements that P. T. Barnum and his competitors presented, the suspicion of duplicity could be a source of fun—that is, if we take as proof the popularity of their enterprises despite widespread knowledge of the many attendant deceptions. Americans, however, tended to see the intrusion of artifice into their acts of benevolence as troubling, even malignant. The possibility that one might be tricked into aiding the unworthy often occasioned an anxious interrogation of charitable practices.