The Permeable Public: Rituals of Citizenship in Antebellum Men's Debating Clubs

Abstract

Antebellum debating clubs that were operated by and for white Protestant men of the middling and professional classes enacted through a regular ritualized practice the emerging norms of a supposedly universal public. The participating citizen discursively performed by these clubs bore unmistakable signs of a particular class, gender, national origin, race, and religious affiliation. Yet the variety of discourses produced demonstrates the permeability of public culture and reveals the concomitant rationales for rhetorics of universality.