Reading Response for 9/20

When we learned about the U.S. Constitution in grade school, most of us probably remember hearing about the forward thinking men who sat in a room and made the plans for a rising democratic nation.  You may have had the impression that these men had the best interest of all people in mind (we can argue about this point later) and that their job was to think and work collectively and to produce documents that would emphasize democratic ideals and principles.  In this light, the Constitution is often seen as a product, or, as Davidson puts it, “a monument” of the nation-building work done by the founding fathers (5).  While the Constitution is a very important document for the United States, and while I do not want to undermine the significance of what this document – or other key documents for that matter – represents, it is the view that the Constitution is a product or monument that I find so interesting, especially as I think about this as a writing teacher.

In our composition courses, we stress the importance of recognizing the role of the process in writing the final product.  For example, we carefully create assignments that lead students through invention activities, daily work, drafting, workshopping, revising – the list can go on and on.  Our – or at least my – goal is to get students to see value in the work that goes into each stage of the writing process.  Their final copy of a paper should be directly influenced by every step of the process work, and in turn, they should have a much stronger grasp on the final product and more of an investment in the journey that got them to that point.

I immediately saw the connection between process and product in my writing classes and in Davidson’s view of the Constitution as a monument, or final product if you will.  She writes: “Popular history […] has made the Constitution a monument, not the result of a process, representing only a fraction of those living in what would become the United States, that was sometimes divisive, contentious, and even cynical” (5).  When people see the Constitution as a product – especially as a final product – they are missing a huge portion of the nation-building process, just as students who only see their papers as final products overlook the many, many steps that got them to that point.  And, I am not talking about breaking down the steps of the drafting process when writing the Constitution but in the process of nation-building as a whole.  How can we see the process of nation-building in order to have a better understanding of the final product – a democratic nation?

Davidson makes the claim that “the novel operated (to speak metaphorically) among the populace milling outside those locked doors, a populace whose very existence challenged and thus influenced what happened within” (5).  The novel gives us insight into the “range of problems that were both included and overlooked in the nation’s founding documents” (5); they “remind us that ‘nationalism’ was a process, even a contest, about what shape thirteen colonies would assume in the wake of their successful revolt against England” (13).  Thus, novels allow us – as readers – to see the process of forming a democratic nation from a variety of perspective that are not evident in the founding documents themselves, or to turn that statement around, are evident by their omission.  If we read specifically looking for insight into the process of nation-building, as opposed to viewing the Constitution as the final product, then we gain insight into what was an evolving and painful process in order to attempt to have a well-rounded view of nation-building during this time period.  We get an opportunity to observe class, race and gender divisions just to name a few aspects that are key to consider in thinking about the process of creating national identity.  Davidson claims, “Revolution and the Word returns us to the exact moment when process, not product, was the topic at hand” (19).  This sounds like an interesting read, especially in reverting the traditional, popular history view of the Constitution as the final product and thinking about the process that it took for America to become – at least in theory – a democratic nation.

Also, on a side note, I must mention Davidson’s 1993 American Studies Association presidential address, which called for a more transnational approach.  What a nice segway back to our American exceptionalism discussions from The Creation of the Media!