Introduction

Deep in America’s dreams, locked in a complex embrace, stand two mythic figures: the Pioneer (inventor, frontiersman, outlaw, tycoon) – naked, self-made, indebted to no-one, whose accomplishments dwarf his compatriots; and the Citizen – anonymous, unremarkable, but with the strength of thousands, shielded by the absolute equality of the polling booth. In their entanglements – sometimes cooperative, sometimes competitive – these figures act out the profound tension between two fundamental ideologies which drive America’s politics and culture: individualism and egalitarianism.

On one hand America declares itself a land of freedom and opportunity, a country which guarantees each person’s right to be different, to rise above the crowd, to become uncommon. On the other it declares all its citizens equal: no-one is privileged, no-one special; each is but a member of the common weal. The two declarations meet in America’s most hackneyed phrases: “e pluribus unum” [“from many, one”]; “liberty [for each] and justice [for all].” They each claim a share of America’s most fundamental laws, the egalitarian Constitution and the individualist Bill of Rights. And they confound each other in America’s comic archetypes, from Brer Rabbit to Huck Finn to The Little Tramp.

The mythic reconciliation of these two ideologies has been situated physically on the frontier: there (the story goes) any Citizen can become a Pioneer, and in its wake Pioneers rediscover Citizenship. It has been economically situated in capitalism (rags to riches), and politically situated in democracy (my son, the president). Ideological reconciliation in cultural domains, however, has been more problematic; and the domain of art has been the most problematic of all.