Settler Colonialism and the ‘Open Road’: Apropos of Studies in Classic American Literature

This paper begins by citing Lawrence’s prediction in Studies in Classic American Literature that in the near future the influence of dead Native Americans on U.S. society will begin to work in earnest and that some “real changes” will occur. I then go on to examine whether or not we in the twenty-first century actually witness Lawrence’s ‘real changes’, and to what extent they may be attributed to “the demon of the place and the unappeased ghosts of the dead Indians”, as asserted by Lawrence. This examination rests on two assumptions regarding Lawrence’s Studies: 1) that its historical narrative represents a highly iconoclastic yet essentially coherent rendering of the history of white settlers in North America and their settler colonialism; 2) that his readings of classic American authors too, for all the idiosyncrasy of expression, manage to capture the deep meaning behind the ‘duplicity’ that characterizes creative American works. In this narrative the sinking of the whaling ship Moby-Dick marks the final destruction of the white man’s ‘blood being’. Lawrence’s greatness lies, however, in his going beyond mere diagnosis and in finding in Whitman’s ‘Open Road’ a new vision of true democracy, “the bravest doctrine man has ever proposed to himself.”