Sympathy and community in Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself

Whitman’s professed sympathy for a diverse range of individuals in Song of Myself has been the subject of much criticism. Some readers see his ambition to speak to and ‘for’ all others as an imperialist prescription of homogeneity between humans, an arrogation of agency and erasure of difference. I ask if there a way of mobilizing sympathy in this poem which does not rely on the assumption of a common humanity. Briefly situating Whitman in relation to the nineteenth century discourse of sentimentalism, I go on to explore how sympathy can be heard as a shareable material affect which exceeds the moral and humanist register. With particular reference to Whitman’s use of ‘catalogues’ I look at how Song of Myself creates a ‘community of those who have nothing in common’