Theories of hegemony imply that in stable political societies ideas will also be more stable, because the mechanisms of social reproduction are under control. One consequence of revolution will be intellectual disruption and dislocation. Different values and concepts, deriving from both the old and new orders, float around chaotically, occassionally clashing or fusing in strange ways, before a new hegemony resolves itself. This process is related to, but not controlled by, re-alignments among social and economic groups; means of social reproduction are the linking factor.
The Federalist persuasion or mentality in revolutionary America cannot be a static mental or ideological structure. Rather, it is a particular part of that process of redefinition of networks of values, without either an end or a beginning. The moment of political division in 1788 when Americans had to identify themselves as for or against the Constitution - that is, as Federalists or Anti-Federalists - may be a helpful test, but its binary nature is misleading. My project is to map the intellectual connections that gave shape, if only vaguely and transiently, to the Federalist movement in 1787-9. How did the patterns of American thought shift in the 1780s, and what might the implications of those shifts be for post-Constitutional thought?
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