within U.S. television, religion, and governance. She is an Associate Professor of Communication and Women's & Gender Studies at Hope College.
Kornfield applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Invoking the Fathers: Dangerous Metaphors and Founding Myths in Congressional Politics, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Invoking the Fathers opens with two substantive quotes from U.S. senators, followed by my analysis of these speeches along with other senators’ speeches from the prior pages.Learn more about Invoking the Fathers at the Johns Hopkins University Press website.Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) celebrated Constitution Day by stating,How well does this page represent my book? Page 99 does a good job of showing readers what they can expect from Invoking the Fathers in terms of topic, evidence, and method! This book is an analysis of how contemporary congresspeople talk about the “Founding Fathers” and that comes across very well on page 99.Two hundred thirty-two years ago, our Founding Fathers gathered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia and signed a document that remains the supreme law of the land today. In those two hundred thirty-two years, the United States has become the most powerful, the most prosperous Nation in the history of the world, and that success has come as a result of the framework set by our Constitution. The genius of the Framers was their determination to maximize the freedom of the individual while recognizing the need for a central government limited in size by our Constitution.Likewise, Senator James Lankford (R-OK) stated,On September 17, 1787, this great experiment was finalized to try to form what they considered a more perfect Union, and the birth of our Constitution happened. This was a radical experiment in self-government, and most of the rest of the world at the time stared at those whom we now call our Founding Fathers and thought, that will never work.These speeches focus on the past, on a specific moment of origin: September 17, 1787. Senator Daines (R-MT) calls attention to this origin moment by situating it in space—Independence Hall, Philadelphia—and situating it in time by repeating the phrase “two hundred thirty-two years.” Senator Ernst (R-IA) focuses on this origin moment by framing the Constitution as a material item, a “gift” bestowed on us by the “Founding Fathers.” This activates the inheritance framework so frequently used in congressional discourse. Senator Lankford (R-OK) personifies this sense of inheritance and lineage by describing the Constitution as birthed—by the fathers—on September 17, 1787.
These celebrations of Constitution Day engage in the typical veneration of the “Founding Fathers,” positioning them as exceptionally wise. Senator Ernst (R-IA) states that the founders had “incredible foresight”; Senator Daines (R-MT) applies the word “genius” to the founders; and Senator Lankford (R-OK) suggests they were so brilliant the rest of the world could not even conceive of how their plan might work.
Page 99, however, does not give readers a clear sense of Invoking the Fathers’ overarching argument. It shows readers what I am analyzing and how I approach the topic, but does not zoom out to the book’s larger interpretive argument. Namely, it does not show how, by revering the founders as fathers, contemporary political discourse (1) constructs us-other binaries between real America and everyone else, (2) frames this real America as exceptional, (3) imagines a possessive relationship, in which the “Founding Fathers” belong to “us,” and “we” to them, (4) uses material appeals to frame this exceptional America as real, and (5) assumes that this real America is inherited by real Americans—the “us.” At every turn, the “realness” of the United States is defined by its lineage to the “Founding Fathers,” normalizing a sense of lineage in which some people—the founders’ supposed heirs—have greater claims to the country and its governance. Ultimately, this shapes what it means to govern in the name of “the people” and who can be “the people.”
Page 99 does, however, provide evidence for this argument by specifically pointing to the sense of lineage and inheritance in Senators Daines’ and Lankford’s speeches, and it speaks more broadly to the myth of American exceptionalism.
Page 99 is part of my favorite chapter in Invoking the Fathers. Reading through years of congressional speeches, I was shocked to find that congresspeople spend a lot of time on ceremonial speeches—for Constitution Day, National Bald Eagle Day, National Bible Week, and so on. I enjoyed writing this chapter so much, in part, because I was so surprised to find these ceremonial speeches in the Congressional Record. These speeches venerate the “Founding Fathers” and the founding era, drawing on and playing into the myth of American exceptionalism.
--Marshal Zeringue
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