Impossibly American

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Christian P. Haines
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
American Renaissance ◽  
System P ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
Historical Trajectory

This chapter distinguishes American exceptionalism from what the author terms a singular America. It argues that American exceptionalism depends on disciplining or taming the utopianism associated with the United States. The chapter defines a singular America as a politics, culture, and literature that draws on American exceptionalism only to overturn the latter’s investments in capitalism, settler colonialism, and the nation-state. It argues that American Studies needs to pay more attention to the excluded middle between American exceptionalism and its critique—a zone of politics and culture in which complicity and critique mutually constitute one another. The chapter also explains the connection between the critical discourse of biopolitics and utopianism, reading the work of Michel Foucault in terms of how it refocuses utopianism on the body and life, rather than geography or space. It elaborates a singular America in terms of a literary commons: a tradition of literature devoted to non-capitalist and non-sovereign social relations. Finally, the chapter explains the book’s literary historical trajectory—how it connects the American Renaissance (or mid-nineteenth century) to the contemporary period—in terms of the rise and decline of American hegemony in the capitalist world-system.

Filming Hegemony: Hollywood and the Manichean Script of Geopolitics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Löfflmann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Security ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Film Productions

The chapter focuses on popular culture as key site for the production of constructs of geopolitical identity and practices of national security as common sense knowledge and conventional wisdom, examining popular Hollywood movies of the ‘national security cinema’ and the involvement of the Pentagon in the filmmaking process. Representations of geopolitical identity and national security are analyzed in some of the commercially most successful films in the United States released between 2009 and 2015. The chapter’s analysis testifies to the enduring popularity of key ideational themes and mythologies, such as American exceptionalism, military heroism, and external threats endangering the existence of the United States, its interests and values under the Obama presidency. The serial reproduction of these national security narratives, realized in multi-million dollar film productions, illustrates the cross-discursive leverage of American hegemony over alternative formulations of grand strategy under the Obama presidency and the popularity of a particular national security imagery of American geopolitical identity.

scholarly journals Vitoria, Suárez, and Grotius: James Brown Scott’s Enduring Revival

Grotiana ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-162
Author(s):  
Mark Somos ◽  
Joshua Smeltzer
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
The Face ◽  
Anglo American

This article recovers James Brown Scott’s conviction in American exceptionalism, a belief that underlay both his institutional work as well as his understanding of the origins and trajectory of international law. In the first section, we discuss Scott’s interpretation of Hugo Grotius as part of his tactic to make US foreign affairs policies and perspectives more compelling by presenting them as universal. In the second section, we argue that Scott’s writings on the Spanish origins of international law were in fact meant to protect Anglo-American hegemony and US influence in the Americas in the face of rapidly changing geopolitical pressures. In the final section we suggest that Scott’s US exceptionalism is reflected in his use of the United States Constitution and Supreme Court as a model for key international organizations. We conclude that Scott reframed Vitoria not to redress American bias but to enshrine it.

American power and the empire of capitalist democracy

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 191-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. John Ikenberry
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
American Power ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Capitalist World

The United States is today a global superpower without historical precedent. It stands at the centre of an expanding democratic-capitalist world order that is itself, fifty years after its creation, the dominant reality in world politics. Despite expectations that American hegemony would disappear and trigger the emergence of a new and unstable multipolar post-Cold War order, the opposite has in fact happened. American power has grown even greater in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although American power is not uniformly welcome around the world, serious ideological challengers or geopolitical balancers are not to be found. Scholars who a decade ago were debating the prospect of co-operation and conflict in a post-hegemonic world are now debating the character and future of world politics within an American unipolar order.

Porous Borders

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Lim
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
The Body ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Diverse Population ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Transnational Study

With the railroad’s arrival in the late nineteenth century, immigrants of all colors rushed to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, transforming the region into a booming international hub of economic and human activity. Following the stream of Mexican, Chinese, and African American migration, Julian Lim presents a fresh study of the multiracial intersections of the borderlands, where diverse peoples crossed multiple boundaries in search of new economic opportunities and social relations. However, as these migrants came together in ways that blurred and confounded elite expectations of racial order, both the United States and Mexico resorted to increasingly exclusionary immigration policies in order to make the multiracial populations of the borderlands less visible within the body politic, and to remove them from the boundaries of national identity altogether. Using a variety of English- and Spanish-language primary sources from both sides of the border, Lim’s transnational study reveals how a borderlands region that has traditionally been defined by Mexican-Anglo relations was in fact shaped by a diverse population that came together dynamically through work and play, in the streets and in homes, through war and marriage, and in the very act of crossing the border.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE FORMATION OF THE US IDEOLOGY

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-27
Author(s):  
A. Zahorodnia
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Value System ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of

This article addresses the role of Christianity in the formation of the US ideology, particularly its influence on the formation of the concept of American exceptionalism. Although the recent decades have witnessed the increasing attention of American and European scholars to the influence of Christianity on the history of the United States, the body of historical research, and especially the Ukrainian one, still lacks general comprehensive analyses of the role of Christianity in the formation of American ideology and political culture. The article pays a particular attention to the messianic ideas preached by the Puritan leaders in the early history of the New World. These ideas have deeply rooted in the political ideology of the U.S. and still have a strong influence on its development. The article covers the role of Christian rhetoric, which is widely used in the addresses to the nation, and proves its significant role in the shaping of public opinion. Special attention is also paid to the characterizing of Protestant ethic, which basic principles had an impact on the formation of the American value system and influenced the development of the most crucial features of American identity – deep individualism and entrepreneurial mindset.

Gendered differences in emigration and mobility perspectives among European researchers working abroad

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scheibelhofer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Highly Skilled

This paper focuses on gendered mobilities of highly skilled researchers working abroad. It is based on an empirical qualitative study that explored the mobility aspirations of Austrian scientists who were working in the United States at the time they were interviewed. Supported by a case study, the paper demonstrates how a qualitative research strategy including graphic drawings sketched by the interviewed persons can help us gain a better understanding of the gendered importance of social relations for the future mobility aspirations of scientists working abroad.

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

Civil sphere and democracy in Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Ch. Alexander ◽  
Carlo Tognato
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Class Stratification ◽  
Civil Sphere ◽  
The Everyday

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the civil spheres of Latin America remain in force, even when under threat, and to expand the method of theorizing democracy, understanding it not only as a state form, but also as a way of life. Moreover, the task of the authors goes beyond the purely application of the theory of the civil sphere in order to emphasize the relevance not only in practice, but also in the theory of democratic culture and institutions of Latin America. This task requires decolonizing the arrogant attitude of North theorists towards democratic processes outside the United States and Europe. The peculiarities of civil spheres in Latin America are emphasized. It is argued that over the course of the nineteenth century the non-civil institutions and value spheres that surrounded civil spheres deeply compromised them. The problems of development that pockmarked Latin America — lagging economies, racial and ethnic and class stratification, religious strife — were invariably filtered through the cultural aspirations and institutional patterns of civil spheres. The appeal of the theory of the civil sphere to the experience of Latin America reveals the ambitious nature of civil society and democracy on new and stronger foundations. Civil spheres had extended significantly as citizens confronted uncomfortable facts, collectively searched for solutions, and envisioned new courses of collective action. However when populism and authoritarianism advance, civil understandings of legitimacy come under pressure from alternative, anti-democratic conceptions of motives, social relations, and political institutions. In these times, a fine-grained understanding of the competitive dynamics between civil, non-civil, and anti-civil becomes particularly critical. Such a vision is constructively applied not only to the realities of Latin America, but also in a wider global context. The authors argue that in order to understand the realities and the limits of populism and polarization, civil sphere scholars need to dive straight into the everyday life of civil communities, setting the civil sphere theory (CST) in a more ethnographic, “anthropological” mode.

The French Way

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Kuisel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
French Language ◽  
French Cinema ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Technology Sector ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
The U.S

There are over 1,000 McDonald's on French soil. Two Disney theme parks have opened near Paris in the last two decades. And American-inspired vocabulary such as “le weekend” has been absorbed into the French language. But as former French president Jacques Chirac put it: “The U.S. finds France unbearably pretentious. And we find the U.S. unbearably hegemonic.” Are the French fascinated or threatened by America? They Americanize yet are notorious for expressions of anti-Americanism. From McDonald's and Coca-Cola to free markets and foreign policy, this book looks closely at the conflicts and contradictions of France's relationship to American politics and culture. The book shows how the French have used America as both yardstick and foil to measure their own distinct national identity. France has charted its own path: it has welcomed America's products but rejected American policies; assailed Americ's “jungle capitalism” while liberalizing its own economy; attacked “Reaganomics” while defending French social security; and protected French cinema, television, food, and language even while ingesting American pop culture. The book examines France's role as an independent ally of the United States, but he also considers the country's failures in influencing the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations. Whether investigating France's successful information technology sector or its spurning of American expertise during the AIDS epidemic, the book asks if this insistence on a French way represents a growing distance between Europe and the United States or a reaction to American globalization. Exploring cultural trends, values, public opinion, and political reality, this book delves into the complex relationship between two modern nations.

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