The Secret History of America, Chapter III
Pandemic Election Survival Edition — UC Berkeley American Studies Seminar Spring 2020
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
— Allen Ginsberg, America. Written in Berkeley, January 17, 1956.
The 2020 edition of the Secret History of America is set during the apocalypse. Not necessarily the end of the world, although given the prominence of what the Bay Area now calls “Orange Sky Day” in these essays, this possibility is manifestly closer than ever. Rather I am referring to the Greek root of the term apocalypse, meaning an unveiling or revealing, a moment in which the veil is lifted from our protected eyes and the deeper realities of the world, its cruelty, corruption and contradictions are revealed for all to see.
This unveiling reveals a radically diminished world, a world in which all the once firm social bonds, daily rhythms, and reasonable expectations for our lives have been suspended, prohibited or rendered dangerous. COVID-19 did not just suspend the ordinary flow of time, but it exposed our deep human interdependence and thus upended our social contracts. The elderly, poor, incarcerated and undefended die alone. The young suspend the promises of their youth. The angry collect guns and lie to themselves. And a bloated and bronzed Nero fiddled while democracy burns.
This year killed our heroes: RBG and EVH, Black Panther and James Bond, Kobe and Maradona, Alex Trebeck and John Lewis. It also killed the movies, live music, book parties, sex, your favorite bar, blue skies, Thanksgiving, your faith in the future, and probably someone that you know personally. We know, intellectually, that History is long and exceedingly complex; but it’s hard not to take all this very very personally.
After all that we’ve experienced this year — a spring of broken presidential primaries, a summer of protests and violent counter-revolution, a fall of high-anxiety-low-expectation voting, and now a winter of death and despair — the result is that the secret history of America stands exposed, its secrets once held close are now openly spilled across cable news, twitter feeds, the blood in the streets. And across this collection of stunning personal essays.
The essays included in this publication confront this unveiling directly, they map its contours and expand on its consequences. They mark a generational confrontation with a broken planet, a betrayed democracy, a diminished social world, and an economic system enthralled by mass death. These essays are the product of fertile minds, a supportive community of thinkers and writers, and a professor eager to listen and learn from the wisdom of the young and angry.
Given the freedom to write, to express themselves in whatever form or subject they choose, this collection of essays reveal something profound: It shows us what the world looks like to young people after all the illusions, all the dissembling, and all the false hopes have fallen away and the need to survive rises back to the surface. They tell the story of how one situates themselves in a world on the cusp of its end but where a new one has yet to appear on the horizon.
The Syllabus
Who writes the secret history of America? Any of us and all of us. Some can, some do, and in this class we will try.
Week 1 — August 27
Introduction etc.
Create a Medium.com account and read around an hour or so.
Week 2 — September 3
Arundhati Roy, “Pandemic as Portal,” Financial Times (April 3, 2020).
Achille Mbembe, “The Universal Right to Breathe,” Africa is a Country (June 17, 2020).
John Lewis, “Together, You Can Redeem The Soul of Our Nation.” NY Times (July 30, 2020).
Adam Serwer, “The Cruelty is the Point” The Atlantic (October 3, 2018).
Miriame Kaba, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police,” NY Times (June 12, 2020).
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “Of Course There Are Protests” NY Times (May 29, 2020).
Ed Yong, “How the Pandemic Defeated America,” The Atlantic (August 3, 2020).
Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style of American Politics” (1965)
Week 3 — September 10
Michel-Rolph Truillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History
Week 4 — September 17
Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
Week 5 — September 24
Jonathan Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How The Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland
Week 6 — October 1
Astra Taylor, Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss it When Its Gone…
Week 7 — October 8
Roderick Ferguson, We Demand: The University and Student Protests
Week 8 — October 15
Daniel Martinez Hosang and Joseph E Lowndes, Producers, Parasites and Patriots: Race and the New Right Wing Politics of Precarity
Week 9–15 pitch, draft, edit, revise, illustrate and publish essays.
