Dismantling borders, assembling hierarchies

The idea of democracy was pervasive in Percy Grainger’s career. However, his conception was as unstable as it was pervasive. At times, it led him to inclusive vistas while in other cases it motivated him to displace undesirable cultural influences in favour of those from Nordic and Anglo-Saxon ‘races’. Given these contradictory impulses, can we attribute these disparities to the same source? If so, how could democracy serve as a catalyst for such wide-ranging aims? Moreover, beyond shaping his sociological imagination, can we locate the ways in which Grainger’s democratic principles became enshrined in his works? Guided by these questions, this chapter will elucidate how Grainger’s efforts to dismantle boundaries of identity stimulated the creation of exclusive hierarchies. It traces the nineteenth-century roots of his thinking by surveying his reading of Walt Whitman, before illustrating how these ideas generated a musical analogue in his Marching Song of Democracy. It argues that the process of marking and unmarking traits that once provided for a humanistic union of democracy, cosmopolitanism, and nationalism became more ominous after his encounter with the ideas of American eugenicists

Computer Science · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Historical Studies of British Isles · Philippine History and Culture

• Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

  Anthony Reid, Benedict Anderson•Pacific Affairs•1985

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