Redrawing the Boundaries of
American Studies[i]
Mukesh Williams
American
Studies arose in the 1930s as an interdisciplinary field that incorporated
disparate and diverse elements from literature, sociology, political science,
economics, and history among others in order to understand the uniqueness of
American culture and experience. In the beginning it combined the methodologies
of literary criticism and historical research but gradually incorporated
theories used in gender, postcolonial, Marxist, poststructuralist,
postmodernism, and cultural studies. In the last seventy-five years the
methodologies used in American Studies have gone much beyond the judgment and
expectation of its founder Vernon Louis Parrington who enunciated its precepts
in his two-volume work Main Currents in American Thought in 1927.
However now American Studies stands at a point in time when it must question
and expand its methodologies and redraw its boundaries.
We find
ourselves at a historical moment that is both bewildering and critical. Since
1991 America has emerged as the most powerful nation in the world, and its
indubitable might is felt, for good or for ill, by both the American people and
peoples in most parts of the world.. This has far-reaching consequences not
only in the realm of foreign policy but also in all other areas of human
endeavor—from political values and civil liberties to social sciences and
literature.[ii] American Studies have not been able to
adequately address these issues partly because it lacks the requisite ‘tools of
inquiry’ and partly because we lack the social will. As we confront the present
crisis in world history it becomes obligatory for American Studies to expose
the underpinnings of politics, history, economics, culture and civilization by
seeking new “avenues of inquiry” and asking “new questions.”[iii]
Edward Said articulated some of these questions and concerns in his works
especially the intricate workings of political empires, the subtle relationship
between knowledge and power and the terrible conjunction of culture and
conflict. Even as we miss his presence we may still be able to use his ideas to
energize modern disciplines.
After the Second World War the United States emerged as a global power
with hegemonic ambitions in the politics and economies of other nations. The
Cold War collisions with the Soviet Union strengthened American resolve to
market American exceptionalism more aggressively. Government support to
American Studies gave credence to the idea that American Studies was a part of American
hegemonic intentions. Metaphors of American innocence, the virtuous American
Adam, the American Dream, consensual American mind gained importance in
understanding American culture and character. These metaphors pulled out the
pre-war concern with social betterment and its associated themes such as the
Progressive and New Deal. The principle of self-improvement gave significance
to America as an ongoing democratic project based on an engaging self-criticism
of its problems and triumphs.[iv]
American Studies therefore supported two contradictory assumptions about
America—a messianic America, leading the world towards a superior civilization
and a divided America revealing its contradictions and Cold War biases.
The violent and often traumatic conflicts within and without America
in the latter half of the last century encouraged American Studies to question
notions of American exceptionalism and cultural hegemony. The Civil Rights
Movements of the Sixties and the protracted Vietnam War of the Seventies brought
to the surface the multicultural problems America faced and a new international
role it ought to play in the future. A self-questioning of the American
cultural ethos emerged in tandem with the rise of feminism, ethnicity, and
models for conflict resolution and cultural diversity. The emergence of
cross-cultural contours in American Studies was modified abroad by foreign
Americanists to suit their own cultural and social conditions. These studies
have raised valuable questions for American Studies such as politicization of
American culture and popular perceptions about America abroad.
The ongoing projects of globalizing American Studies need to take
cognizance of an increasingly polarized world, and consequently, if it must
succeed, negotiate the intersection between Western cultural imperialism and
Islamic religious resistance. The American gung-ho approach of representing
American Studies from within its territorial boundaries must give way to a
mature and expansive acceptance of non-American approaches constructing
American culture and civilization from the outside. Americanists from abroad
must be encouraged to provide a non-American point of view of American Studies
realigning a somewhat parochial representation of American nation, culture and civilization.
The processes of globalization in the last decade have both impeded and
transformed societies and cultures eliciting negative or positive reactions
from nation states. The resistance American Studies encounters as it leaves
American shores and the transformation it undergoes in alien lands acquire
significance for Americanists both in America and abroad. The changing
ethical-political horizon, the new methodologies of representation, the
Foucauldian epistemological analysis, feminist critiques of gender and
sexuality, post-colonial and subaltern perspective, post-structuralist theory,
new historicist practice, narrativizing historical techniques, globalizing
theories, whiteness studies, politics of location and concepts of alterity and
race have all redefined the taxonomy, ideologies and methodologies employed in
American Studies. And in a climate where local histories are valued, competing
perspectives find expression in global media and politics of location
privileges perspectives, MELUS India and MELUS chapters outside the United
States provide valuable interpretations of American Studies that need not clash
but can, with some adjustments, coexist.[v]
U.S. Hegemony
Though in
recent years American foreign policy, based on the Bush Doctrine might not have
much to do with American Studies within the United States, it nonetheless
affects its dissemination through the activities of institutions and scholars
it funds abroad.[vi]
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 attack on New York and Washington, the dramatic
successes of the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan and Iraq and subsequent
terrorist attacks on American civilians in the Middle East and South Asia,
American funding to American Studies abroad has dramatically increased. U. S. administrators see a ray of hope in
American Studies providing a better understanding of American values and a
rationale for U.S. presence abroad. This could help alter the misperception of
American "hegemonic" ambitions and reduce hostility to American
national interests.
Since
American foreign policy has a strong bearing on the promotion of American
Studies abroad, American Studies must be encouraged to recognize differing
perspectives of America within and abroad. When Italian Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi derided Islamic culture's supposed backwardness while praising the
cultural superiority of Christian civilization, he quickly found himself
isolated not only by the United States but also by European allies such as
France, Britain and Germany. None of these countries can afford to fan an
overtly rightist sentiment in Europe and naively believe that they can live
comfortably with a large and growing Muslim population at home.[vii]There
is a growing awareness in the United States of non-American views that the
recent attack on American symbols of wealth and military power were a
consequence of American misguided foreign policy in the Middle East. American
critics trying to understand the cause of terrorist attack on America are now
looking into the suggestion that constant American support and endorsement of
Israel's position against Palestine's right to self-determination could be the
real reason.
Many Asian
and European critics were quick to realize the inherent cause behind the attack
on America, as both have had experiences of the defeat of European imperialism
and the insidious impact of American hegemony sidestepping the apparent
political institutions of the Empire. Perhaps a new awareness, that American
foreign policy has gone wrong somewhere, has prompted Bush's administration to
force Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to renegotiate a peace settlement
with the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. The gradual withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza Strip and the electoral
victory of Hamas have created new uncertainties in both the countries and the
rest of the world. America's slow realization that though European leaders
have pledged strong support for military action, her citizens are more
interested to explore other non-military options. Now in Europe more weight is
given to American cultural arrogance and capitalism defiantly seeking revenge
and perpetuating oppression on the Third World. American legislators are
recognizing the exploitative nature of American imperialism speeded up by
global capitalism and powerful media.[viii]
Countries such as India reacted angrily to sops for U.S. support and lifting of
democracy sanctions, while failed dictatorial states such as Pakistan greedily
accepted economic aid.
The U.S.
post-Cold War foreign policy underwent another process of nationalization in
the last few months due to funding counter-terrorism and an impending economic
recession. Contentious issues on the foreign policy agenda stuck for a long
time, such as free trade agreement with Jordan, payment of overdue to the
United Nations and China's WTO membership, were all cleared without debate.
Economic sanctions slapped on India and Pakistan, after both nations turned
nuclear, were withdrawn in return for their support to the U.S. to fight
terrorism. The national crisis in the U.S. took the power from the U.S.
Congress and gave it to the President. Powerful lobbies within the U.S.
Congress directing foreign policy collapsed within weeks. It is common
knowledge that since the 1990s, powerful business or ideological lobbies in the
Congress privatized U.S. foreign policy. As such it was not at all surprising
to find that of the 120 unilateral sanctions imposed on different countries in
the world since World War I, nearly half of them were passed between 1992 and
1998. It is awesome to see how so few people in the U.S. Congress could decide
the fate of so many in the world by controlling and imposing sanctions.[ix]
Everyone seemed to have forgotten about the missile defense project so
enthusiastically pushed by the Bush administration earlier.
All this
does not mean that Pax Americana has learnt its lesson and that American
triumphalism is now in retreat. On the contrary American oil interests are
zealously guarded and its intervention in Israel-Palestine imbroglio
unassailable.[x]
America has taught a lesson to the world and in teaching this lesson it has
sent the message across that American hegemony will not break down. The only
thing that has changed is the keenness to explain its position, to keep a broad
coalition going on and to reduce malevolent anti-Americanism in the Arab world.
The modern
reading of history by the neoconservatives in the United States in the phrase “war
on terror” reduces the rich interactions of America with different cultures of
the world to a Machiavellian conflict “to rid the world of evil.” Obviously,
America today is the most “indispensable nation” in the world to use Madeleine
Albright’s succinct phrase. Everyday, people around the world see the workings
of the US imperialism. Already the U.S. is referred to as the American Empire
in public discourses, something that was dismissed as left wing polemic a
decade ago.[xi]
America is seen as the repository of universal values, human rights, liberalism
and democracy. Today revisionist historians like Niall Ferguson exhorts the US
to accept the white man’s burden and not continue to be “an empire in denial.” The empire emerges with an array of political words like terrorism and
homeland security. Amy Kaplan warns us to go beyond the “racism of empire” and
reveal the way in which Arabs and Islam are “racialized.” (p. 5).
Postmodernism
has destabilized a transcendental center into which multiple discourses could
return; it has also discredited the faculty of reason and common corporeal
experience as the basis for judgment. Though postmodernism theory does not
celebrate diversity it does provide grounds for negotiating alterity without
laying down criteria for legitimating divergent claims. When difference or
alterity is constructed in terms of non-criteria, it does not allow room for
translation as it blocks the future of dialogue. After the 11th
September attacks, political language in the U. S. has tried to construct
America as a "privileged site of universal values." And therefore
there are no terrorisms in countries that have suffered in the last 30 years
but regionalism, separatism or civil unrest masquerading as terrorism. There is
now only one "grand terrorism" that threatens to destroy the
teleological and eschatological force of American values in the grand
historical narrative and that is Islamic terrorism. And the need to punish the
perpetrators making it a spectacle is Foucauldian in nature. Foucault claimed, “…justice no longer
takes public responsibility for that violence that is bound up with its
practice.”[xii]
The theatrical display of legitimate disciplinary powers to return to normalcy
is another ruse of modernity. Legitimate display of power is also an attempt to
displace the pain Americans feel as victims and the relation they bear to
others who have been in the same situation. What kind of responsibility they
owe to others in a climate where violence replaces politics. A tolerable peace
can arise if we acknowledge the fallibility and vulnerability of human beings
in history that need to be constantly negotiated. And herein lies the
significance of American Studies to function as a go-between allowing the
explication of American values and expression of non-American opinions.
Globalization and its Discontents
The origins of globalization may be technological, coupled with
postmodernist information strategies, as argued by Frederic Jameson, political and
economic as explained by theorists such as Malcolm Waters, Arjun Appadurai,
Anthony Giddens, Ronald Robertson, David Harvey, James Clifford, Frederick
Buell and Susan Stanford Friedman, cultural as understood by sociologist such
as Immanuel Wallerstein or as old as two millennia as seen by historians such
as William H McNeill and Marshall Hodgson, the fact remains that globalization
has become pervasive, is here to stay for a long time and must be dealt with
seriously. Jurgen Habermas in his recent book, The Postnational Constellation observes that in the new century
democracies in order to catch up with globalization have to work desperately to
survive “beyond national borders” through “cosmopolitan solidarity.”[xiii]
The fears of American hegemony in communication and capitalism, the
twin arms of globalization, has led theorists like Enrique Dussel to propose a
non-Eurocentric historiography that would be compatible with the interest of
other marginalized institutions and states. American Studies often seen as a
cultural and symbolic manifestation of international capitalism in a
postmodernist world. Any enthusiasm in the area is invariably misconstrued as
either hegemonic or self-serving. The basis of such misconceptions is not
groundless. Since global communication network involve new technology, the
information travelling on it continues to be harnessed from the world of
advertisement, publicity and propaganda either modernist or postmodernist.
Jameson argues that when communication—such as American TV programs and sleazy
Hollywood movies—travels the digital pulse of technology it acquires a specific
cultural significance that inadvertently suggests a world culture.[xiv]
This tendency is understandably viewed by most hitherto colonized nations as
another form of colonization.
Though the concept of globalization and post-globalization have been
loosely defined they undeniably reflect a more comprehensive system of
communication and flow of market that the world has known till now. Frederic
Jameson saw it as a postmodern phenomenon that after nearly a decade remained
“unclassifiable” though it affected every aspect of life—from culture,
sociology, medicine and information to ecology and consumerism. Lacking a locus
standi or a “privileged context” globalization, post-globalization and
anti-globalization constantly slipped from one discipline into another, being
appropriated by each and belonging to none.[xv]
As globalization developed it realigned itself with national and transnational
interests creating a new social situation hitherto not encountered by academic
disciplines rooted in the nineteenth century reality. Both terrorism and
counter-terrorism ride this wave. The electronic flow of economic capital to
finance terrorism, the use of Internet emailing services by the terrorists and
the freezing of economic assets of terrorist organizations as part of
counter-terrorism, all go well with the globalization of capitalism and
fundamentalism of one stripe or another.
American Studies equally partakes of the dynamics of global expansion
by participating in the production of a global culture. Ronald Robertson's
definition of the dynamics of global expansion as “the twofold process of the
particularization of the universal and the universalization of the particular”
can be applied to American Studies as well.[xvi]
And as grand narratives fail, radically incommensurable paradigms (Thomas
Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions) prevail where neither the particular nor the universal
paradigms may be argued convincingly. Living in an increasingly fragile and
precarious world we now get a heady mixture of fundamentalist politics
propelled by distorted dogmas and equally jingoistic nationalism, both making
fervent appeals to history to validate their exaggerated universal claims. The
situation gets further complicated as the processes of globalization come in
contact with national and local identities. On the one hand this interaction
gives rise to antagonism and tensions, and on the other creates unique
situations, in which all the identities involved, define themselves against
each other and seek a new direction. Some politically entrenched nations like
the United States make universal claims, while politically emerging nations
like India or China construct a cultural national identity. Such imaginary
constructions of identity (symbolic or cultural), resorted to by nation states,
would be impossible without the help of international channels of communication
or global economic pathways. It is still
argued whether globalization can be viewed just as mere “transnational
domination” or possesses inherent strength to liberate local cultures from
state and national domination.
It would be naïve to believe that globalization could so easily be
reduced to American hegemony as convincingly argued by Arjun Appadurai in Modernization at Large.[xvii]
Theories of cultural change must themselves be somewhat complex if they are to
understand the complexity of globalization. The emerging post-global reality
finds local cultures getting transformed by Western life styles and products
while at the same time transforming Western products to suit their own needs.
In this way a unique form of culturalism—“the process of naturalizing a subset
of differences that have been mobilized to articulate group identity”—now
reconstitutes identity to a large extent, shaped by mass media and consumer
culture. James Clifford argues that as culture travels trans-nationally on the
wings of globalization it becomes deterritoralized and hybridized.[xviii]
Appadurai points out that deterritoralization “creates new markets for film
companies, art impresarios, and travel agencies, which thrive on the need of
the deterritoralized population for contact with its homeland” creating
transnational identities.[xix]
Globalization has given rise to a sort of cultural pluralism, which
Robertson interestingly believes originates in Japanese religious eclecticism
and in a way privileges Japan technologically and economically. Some theorists
further argue that globalization has given a definite presence, if not provided
a clear identity, to marginalized groups, races and thereby opened spaces for
subaltern and silenced peoples of the world. The fact, however, remains that
national economic markets are getting rapidly assimilated into world economic
systems from which separation or “delinking,” to use Samir Amin’s phrase,
becomes outright impossible. The entry of cable TV (American sleaze and music)
into conservative urban Indian homes has transformed both values and lifestyles
of teenagers. By directly entering conservative Hindu homes, globalization has
done what the British colonial rule could not do in one hundred and fifty
years. But the localized benefits of globalization have left a large segment of
world population dissatisfied.
The anti-globalization movement in Prague (before the annual meeting
of IMF and World Bank in September 2000) marked a strong protest against the
imposition of Western normative standards advocated by the triumvirate of
economic deregulation, national economic management and market
liberalization. Globalization became
synonymous with the Clinton administration, indirectly helping multinationals
to takeover indigenous industry and agriculture, destroying local knowledge and
preventing groups of people and sovereign nations to control their destinies by
reducing them to large geo-political areas. The neo-conservatives under Bush
are happy to outsource to Asian countries such as China and India exhorting its
own working class to develop special skills where they will not compete
unsuccessfully for low-paid jobs with skilled foreign labor. After its initial
success, globalization met with a series of losses—the Asian economic crisis and the collapse of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) project in 1998. If the project had
passed, it would have allowed corporations the right to sue governments if the
latter failed to remove labor and environmental restrictions on free trade.
It is commonly believed that globalization as an economic model has
failed to live up to its promise. It has increased the income gap between the
rich and poor both in the U.S. and poor countries and empowered large
organizations at the expense of ordinary citizens. Only countries that had
employed globalization together with protectionist state policies, such as
China, Malaysia and India, survived. China rejected globalization, Malaysia did
not follow IMF and India used selective globalization.[xx]
Propelled by a terribly materialistic value of wealth accumulation and
profit, globalization and its cultural byproducts have generated some anxiety
amongst intellectuals. Amartya Sen argues that in a post materialist
civilization heralded by globalization the maximization of gains by companies
seems utterly foolish. He believes that companies should be motivated by “commitment and sympathy” to people rather than self-seeking material
gains. Large corporate houses should protect the environment, human rights,
culture and nature and not just concentrate on making profit. The powerful
economic, though at times inhuman, forces globalization unleashes makes
internationalization of culture and its artifacts somewhat suspect. The
occasional resistance to American Studies in certain developing countries is
spawned by these concerns.
Background to American Studies
If we locate globalization of American Studies in this intellectual,
political and social context, issues relating to its reconstruction,
redefinition and re-conceptualization acquire a new focus and significance. The
recent ongoing debate in American academia epitomized by an entire issue of PMLA 2001 devoted to the valorization of
globalizing American Studies, may be seen with renewed enthusiasm within the
U.S. but is viewed with some skepticism amongst scholars outside the U.S.
Within the United States it might be seen as a new nation-building project but
outside it is seen as characteristically Eurocentric riding the ship of
American capitalism.
Obviously conceptions of American Studies within and outside the
United States differ. In the 1960’s American Studies abroad was synonymous with
American literature, especially the study of canonical white male writers such
as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe and William Faulkner.
Later, a few mainstream white women writers such as Carson McCullers, Eudora
Welty and Willa Cather were thrown in with a couple of Jewish-American male
writers such as Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth to suggest sexual
and cultural diversity. The study of American culture, based predominantly on
cultural aesthetics, was divorced from social, political or economic concerns.
The lack of a long-standing tradition that American Studies is heir to
and the fast pace of internationalization it is witnessing now creates complex
problems and offers new opportunities to it. Sixty years ago American
literature, and later American Studies, arose from relative obscurity in
departments of English and began to carve an identity alongside well-entrenched
subjects such as English and indigenous literatures both in the U.S. and
abroad. The speed of globalization and the supremacy of the U.S. in political
and economic areas in the last decade have given American Studies a preeminent
though contentious position in the world. Since American Studies outside the
United States is not seen as separate from American hegemony many studies by
non-American scholars have now focussed attention on cultural dominance and
control, cultural adaptability and deterritoralization, rupture and identity
politics. Within the United States literary theorists such as Stephen
Greenblatt, Giles Gunn, Edward Said and others have already suggested
fundamental changes in American Studies especially in literary studies,
literary history and ethical-political horizons. Islamic religious resistance,
anti-globalization movement and a redefinition of a post-materialist ethics are
altering taxonomic approaches and leading American Studies in new directions
such as environmental issues, human rights, ecology, jurisprudence and border
studies.
The reconstruction of American Studies within the United States that
began in the 1970’s was reflected in a general sense of frustration by U.S.
organizations funding American Studies abroad. Organizations such as the USIA
or USIS began suggesting that they were getting “no returns” from weak-minded
thematic studies abroad. Within American bureaucratic circles it became
increasingly difficult to justify grants to scholars working on predominantly
literary themes. American administrators wanted non-American intellectuals to
focus attention on new and emerging areas in American Studies such as
information technology, management, environment and business protocol. And the
reconstruction of American literary studies further directed attention to issues
such as gender, ethnicity, rupture and race. The ever-expanding conception of
American Studies incorporating new ethical-political perspectives within the
United States and the thought of globalizing American studies in the last few
years, have not only generated new inter-disciplinary studies but also altered
the taxonomy of traditional disciplines such as history, sociology,
anthropology, literature and economics.
The multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of American Studies
have allowed it to easily adapt to the changing needs of the time. As
Americanists realized the inadequacy of traditionally defined approaches to
understanding the complexity of American culture and society they crossed and
redefined boundaries and created a multidisciplinary approach. The
internationalization of American Studies in the last two decades has further
expanded its intellectual and institutional character making scholars see
American culture and society in a global context. Americanists transcending
nationality and culture have directed their gaze on American culture and
society bringing out its variety, paradox and strength.
Internationalizing American Studies
Joint collaboration in mathematics and pure sciences have a
long-standing tradition but in American Studies it is of recent origin. Early
in the last century private and public funding of American Studies stimulated
interest of foreign scholars in America—related themes popularizing American
culture and tradition. American-funded programs in American Studies during the
1940s, sponsored by Fulbright Foundation and the United States Information
Agency aided in creating an international movement for American Studies.
Fellowships, grants and exchange programs involving American scholars going
abroad and non-American scholars travelling to the United States gave American
Studies a varied and comparative perspective. Recently, the American Studies
Scholars Program (ACLS), East-West Center Hawaii, Salzburg Seminars and U.S.
Embassy sent non-American faculty and students to the U.S. to study American
culture and society and occasionally to teach for short duration at
universities.
International conferences conducted by various associations of
American Studies, such as the ASA and MELUS, not only stimulated interest in
American Studies but further diversified areas of research. In the last decade
ASA annual conferences have integrated papers by non-American scholars within
thematic panels and not grouped them in a separate slot. This has given foreign
scholars an opportunity to interact with American scholars introducing new
perspectives and stimulating broader areas of study. In the 1980’s international participation at ASA conferences was largely from
Europe, but in 1990’s scholars from
Asia and Africa also presented papers or attended the conference. In 1994
nearly thirty-six scholars from fifteen countries attended the ASA conference.
The increasing globalization of American Studies has prompted many foreign
associations or affiliated associations of American Studies to invite U.S.
Americanists, officially or personally, to conferences on American culture and
society to present papers and chair sessions.
In the last two decades U.S.-European collaboration in American
Studies has widened to include Latin American, Australian, Asian and African
scholars. This cooperation is evident in some books published in American
Studies in the last decade.[xxi]
David Nye and Mick Gidley (universities of Odense and Exeter respectively)
co-edited a book of essays on the influence of American popular culture on
post-war European society based on research material from The Netherlands
Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 1995
Amritjit Singh (Rhode Island College) Max J. Skidmore (University of Missiouri-Kansas
City) and Isaac Sequeira (Osmania University) published a collection of essays
from New Delhi entitled American Studies
Today: An Introduction To Methods and Perspectives that provides new vistas
of American landscape in a cross-cultural context. All the three Americanists
have, sometime or the other, been associated with the American Studies Research
Center (ASRC) now renamed the Indo-American Centre For International Studies
(ACIS) Hyderabad. The establishment of regional American Studies research
centers in Germany, United Kingdom, India and Japan has not only globalized
American Studies but also given a new boost to cross-cultural perspectives.
Joint collaboration between foreign and native Americanists has
focused attention on non-American analyses of American culture and society from
colonization to the present. Foreign observers of America, such as Alexis de
Tocqueville and Bryce are increasingly used in understanding American culture
and society. Now Latin American, East European, African, Mid-eastern and South
Asian observations in American Studies have acquired a respectability that was
hitherto denied to them. Foreign observation about America itself has become
the subject of research in graduate courses at various universities in the U.S.
All this has been possible with the sudden collapse of powerful regimes in the
last part of the twentieth century and the sudden demise of meta-narrative of
historical necessity. Jorge Luis Borges belief in the Jewish historical
position of engagement and detachment gives validity to ruptured narratives—to
be able to “act within that culture” and at the same time not to “feel tied to
it by any special devotion” seems quintessentially English and French. As the
belief in multiple identities, rupture, blockage, marginalized voices,
impurities of language gain a new sanction they become central in re-mapping
literary histories.
The study of American civilization as a democratic and multicultural
experiment has led to comparisons with other civilizations of the world testing
the strength and weakness of American as a nation. Such research has given
American Studies both a comparatist and international perspective and led to
globalization of its subject matter. Though it has generated some suspicion
outside the United States, where American culture becomes synonymous with
American imperialism, it has also spawned a whole new series of studies such as
Immigration Studies, Diaspora Studies, Border Studies, Cultural Studies, Social
Arrangement Studies, Immigration Studies and Media Studies. Immigration Studies
analyse demographic patterns of immigration to and from the U.S. and bring an
increased awareness and appreciation of immigration-related issues. Diasporic
Studies understand cultural continuities and changes in ethnic groups living in
America through sub-themes such as social and cultural assimilation or
conflict. The “new immigration” in the 1960’s especially from Latin America, South Asia, Middle East, Far East and
Africa made immigration studies once more topical. A new area of interest
associated with immigration is Border Studies stimulated by renewed attention
on the geographical intersection of Mexico and the United States. Border
Studies received a boost from colonial and post-colonial discourses of theorists
such as Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Benita Parry, Aijaz Ahmed et. al.
International cultural perspectives, ethnic studies, literary studies feminist
theory have also contributed to border studies and globalization of American
Studies.
Internet and electronic mail have accelerated the dissemination of
American Studies at a rate unparalleled in the history of communication since
the introduction of the printing press. Access to information and international
cooperation takes place without much financial inputs. Free electronic
newsletters and email services allow the dissemination of American history and
culture at a much faster pace, reaching people beyond the boundaries of the
United States. Both Connections
(published jointly by the Organization of American Historians and American
Studies Association) and ASA Newsletter (published
by ASA) provide a forum for international scholars to participate in academic
projects and access information about faculty positions, prizes, scholarships,
fellowships and grants in American Studies. H-AMSTDY started by Jeff Finlay of
New York University is another electronic network on American Studies dealing
with research and teaching projects on American Studies.
The mid-1980 saw a steady increase in international participation at
ASA annual conventions as American Studies widened its scope to include the
Americas and its multicultural identities. The 1989 ASA annual convention was
held in Toronto Canada with a challenging theme “Americas ‘89” that went beyond the borders of the United States. Not only were Canadian scholars, members of
the Program Committee but papers were presented in French and Spanish apart
from English. Many American Studies associations abroad sought, and were
granted, formal affiliation with ASA such as European Association of American
Studies and American Studies associations in India, Japan, Korean, Brazil
Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany, Great Britain and some Scandinavian
countries. The end of Cold War era in 1989 and a more liberal political
restructuring in Poland, Hungary and Romania gave impetus to American Studies
in these countries. They also became formally affiliated to ASA utilizing its
facilities and programs to further deepen their knowledge of American Studies.
They now attend conferences, subscribe to journals, receive newsletters and
become members at subsidized rates.
Today the discipline of American Studies confronts a crisis. Since the 1990s evident
notions of American supremacy in world affairs has made the word ‘empire’
together with the phrase ‘homeland security’ more acceptable, contradicting the
metaphors of melting pot and boundless mobility in the rich tapestry of
American democracy.[xxii]
This new emphasis on the term “empire” brings into focus the Spanish-American
War of 1898 and the violence of subsequent American overseas possessions in the
Caribbean and the Pacific Empire also redefines the twin ideas like territorial
expansionism and American imperialism long-separated and decentered in the
context of US democracy. Though recent centrist and revisionist studies of the
empire see American exceptionalism as distinct from European imperialism of the
nineteenth century, they still see globalization as a decentered form of
American empire.[xxiii]
The process of remapping and redefining the term ‘empire’ has given rise to new
field of studies called ‘empire studies’ that by revising and redefining
American studies and allied disciplines is trying to institutionalize the term
empire.[xxiv]
America has
always been an “empire in denial” that “dare not speak its name” and this
denial ha been the ideological cornerstone of American imperialism and an
important aspect of American exceptionalism.[xxv] When Henry Luce in 1941 coined the phrase the
American Century he was in effect denying the geographical spread of America as
an empire by claiming a temporal identity. He saw the American Century as the
inevitable destiny, a natural consequence of certain historical forces of
progress and change.[xxvi] The growth of American power is directly
linked to the structures of imperialism, capitalism and modernity. David Harvey
sees the growth of American power from 1870-1945 as the strengthening of
“bourgeois imperialism” while that from 1945-1970 as the growth of “postwar
American hegemony.”[xxvii]
This creates an uneven history of American political and economic interests
vis-à-vis Europe, Asia and Africa. For Harvey there is no easy accord between
the “politics of state and empire” and the “molecular processes of capital
accumulation in space and time.”[xxviii]
The masking of the notions of an empire through the rhetoric of democracy
Harvey calls an abstract universalism.[xxix]
American
scholars no longer see the notion of the American Empire as just a “left-wing
polemic.” It is an assertive imperial identity of the neo-conservatives
celebrating American manifest destiny on a global scale, declaring a war
against terror, against the Muslim world in self-righteous terms. “America’s
entire war on terror,” writes Michael Ignatieff, “is an exercise in
imperialism. This may come as a shock to Americans, who don’t like to think of
their country as an empire. But what else can you call America’s legions of
soldiers, spooks, and special forces straddling the globe?”[xxx]
Even if the term empire might seem elusive within America it is impossible to
ignore the frightening growth of American “empire of bases” as Chalmers Johnson
argues in The Sorrows of Empire.[xxxi]
Critics argue that the Bush imperialists and the Bush administration have given
a new twist to the term neo-imperialism by taking over the functions of
imperial governance through its tactics of “stealth, politesse, and obliquity.”[xxxii]
Amy Kaplan sees this new American narrative encompassing the perennial notions
of time and space as the immortality and global invincibility of the empire.[xxxiii]
Now within the discipline of American Studies scholars feel a sense of urgency
to expose the “racism of empire” and understand the method by which the Arabs
and Islam are “racialized” within the U.S. and outside in Guantanamo and Abu
Gharib detention centers.[xxxiv]
At a point
in time when the ideological landmarks in America are once more reconfiguring
its cultural and literary landscape it is important to hold up the US “to its
own professed ideals.”[xxxv]
America has always been a pluralistic society right from its conception. The
national motto of the United States embodied in the Latin phrase e pluribus
unam (out of many one) adopted in 1776 not only refers to the unification
of the 13 independent colonies but also the pluralistic nature of America both
through colonization and immigration. To
claim a new identity of America as an aggressive imperialist abroad and a
champion of democratic values within would be difficult to endorse. Kaplan
rightly argues that “judging American
actions by its own ideal standards” not only has a long-standing history but
also can have a devastating effect. As Mark Twain once argued in “To the Person
Sitting in Darkness” that there has to be two Americas—one that frees and
another that enslaves and dispossesses.[xxxvi]
The condemnation within the US of torture inside Abu Gharib prison was also an
expression of betrayed American ideals.
If American ideals can go beyond the concepts of nationhood and
encompass transnational and global notions of human rights, international law
and universal ethics then this can rejuvenate American studies and American
literature per se. And this after all
should the immediate goal of Amerianists and American studies scholars at a
time when civil liberties are under duress.
Literary Studies
Most non-American scholars in American Studies trace their primary
grounding in scholarship in literary studies. It is not at all surprising that
most foreign Americanists come from departments of English literature,
introduced early in their academic experience to popular white male writers
understood as part of the American experience. As literary theory questioned
this representation of American literature and introduced texts by women and
minority writers, foreign scholars too began to reexamine the somewhat biased
construction of American literature. Non-American scholars trained in the U.S.
applied interdisciplinary approaches to arrive at a fresh understanding of
American culture and society, at times exposing its paradoxes and prejudices.
In the 1980’s the influence of multicultural, feminist, popular culture and media
studies have not only exposed literary anomalies but also activated a
transnational dialogue between U.S. and non-U.S. Americanists.
Attempts to incorporate transnational and cultural influences in
literary studies are not new. The construction of comparative literature as a
discipline to study cross-national, pan-cultural, generic and historic
influences, interactions and transformations is relatively old. These studies
gained momentum by the initial invention rather than discovery of America by
the Europeans in rhetorical terms seen in the rise of chronicles of invention
such as Christopher Columbus’s Letter to
Lord Raphael Sanchez, Treasurer to Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Spain
(1493) to Walter Raleigh’s The Discovery
of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana (1595). Though these
chronicles tried to give legitimacy to an Eurocentric perspective of America—by
emphasizing historical invention and European triumphalism—they also attempted
to erase Native American knowledge. But in doing so they became entrapped in a
colonial identity, which once again had to be reconstituted to develop a New
World identity. The questioning of postcolonial texts—beginning in the 1960’s with
works such as On Heroes and Tombs by
Ernest Sabato (1962), One Hundred Years
of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967), The Mimic Men by V.S. Naipaul (1967) and continuing in the 1990’s
with works such as Lucy by Jamaica
Kincaid (1990)—revealed a new neo-colonial reinvention and triumphalism. Giles
Gunn in his recent essay “Globalizing Literary Studies” in PMLA 2001 wonders if this third wave of colonial reinvention can
“do something” by way of revealing the hidden assumptions and divergences of
texts other than become just “another layer of fabrication” in a scholarly
cultural production.[xxxvii]
The internationalization of American literary studies in the last
decades has been both wide-ranging and procedurally diverse. The literary
protocols of conducting analysis has dramatically altered as evinced by the
introduction of new concepts and terms such as subaltern, alterity, rhizome,
politics of location, Diaspora, hybridity, mestizo, trans-cultural,
Eurocentric, imagining race and deterritoralization. The pluralization of
national traditions has given legitimacy to all literatures written in English
from Southeast Asian to Caribbean causing enormous confusions in departments of
English not only in the U.S. but also in other countries as well. Lack of expertise
or disinterest in new areas has led to neglect or half-hearted attempts at
teaching newly legitimized literatures. Though cultural and economic
globalization has increased global per capita income, given impetus to human
rights, environmental movements and nuclear disarmament it has clearly done so
somewhat arbitrarily strongly favoring the United States. The politics of
location privileging discourses originating in the U.S. have marginalized
voices located outside its boundaries.
Since globalization involves cultural and symbolic exchanges and
transformations as argued by Arjun Appadurai, it challenges, weakens and
alters, if not destroys the construction of English studies built around
homogenous national literatures. Globalization has increasingly demonstrated
the transnational flow of culture and ideology thus shifting the grouping of
literary texts from normative to functional similarities. From this point of
view nationalist narratives are not seen as continuous but from time to time
broken and inter-mixed with other tendencies.
The old hegemony of traditional literary histories characterized by
arbitrary political and aesthetic assumptions has been increasing under
attack. It has been argued that
traditional literary paradigms, propelled by an aesthetic ideology substituted
“taste for rights, subjects for citizens, nostalgia for progress, and
essentialism for historical contingency.”[xxxviii]
According to Greenblatt minority critics have argued that, “the old literary
histories routinely erased multiple differences, enshrining the triumph of the
center over the margins, substituting a false vision of unity for a reality
that was and is ever more multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural.”
A shifting narrative paradigm begins with culture wars of the 1980s
and results in a weakened emphasis on English literature of Great Britain and
introduction of hintherto non-canonical literatures by writers such as Wole
Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison and Derek Walcott in departments of
English. The impurity of literary studies especially English and American
studies, (recognized since the late seventeenth century, refer to Greenblatt)
the weakening of national narratives and cultural narrativizations through
literatures written in English by progressives from New Delhi, Capetown or
Antigua have given rise to what Linda Hutcheon calls “interventionist literary
histories” and allowed people to reinvent their past and re-imagine their
future. However employing the same tactics as used by older historical narratives
to give legitimacy—evolution, teleology and continuity—modern historians employ
the same method though condemning it in others. But the internationalization of
American Studies as Greenblatt argues is not just a recent phenomenon based on
Internet or Apex fares and international capital. Greenblatt writes:
A vital global cultural discourse is ancient; only the increasingly
settled and bureaucratized nature of academic institutions in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, conjoined with a nasty intensification of
ethnocentrism, racism, and nationalism, produced the temporary illusion of
sedentary, indigenous literary cultures making sporadic and half-hearted
ventures toward the margins. The reality, for most of the past as once again
for the present, is more about nomads than natives.[xxxix]
If the global nature of cultural discourse is essentially nomadic and
not native, then it becomes imperative to track the “restless and often
unpredictable movements” of expatriates as scholars and artists refurbishing
and altering literary discourses.
Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique
Land provides an excellent glimpse of transnational mobility in the Jewish
protagonist Abraham Ben Yuji from Tunisia, through Egypt to India. Mobility
studies provide a peek not only into a transient reality but an altered
reality. It makes us aware, even if for a brief moment that things could have
been otherwise; that life could have been lived on another plane, in another
world. Literary history now takes into cognizance the negotiation of multiples
identities and has shifted, as Denis Hollier states in A New History of French Literature, “from the assertion of borders
through literature and the presentation of a literature within borders, to a
questioning that results in the proliferation of these borders.” In other words
literary history “both constitutes and undoes literature.”[xl]
American Studies in
India
Literary
history has also taught us that there is a strong connection between academics
and politics. “Scholarship like trade follows the flag.”[xli]
The origin of American Studies in India in the early 1960s is no exception. The
American Studies Research Center, Hyderabad was established in 1963 through the
initiative of and funding by American agencies like the Ford Foundation and
USEFI to promote the teaching of American history and literature in Indian
universities hitherto dominated by British literature. ASRC soon became an
“academic refuge” for Indian teachers and scholars who began to study American
literature and history without evolving a clear Indian methodology. MELUS India
too has been largely dependent on ASRC and United States Information Agency for
funding its international conferences. However with the shift in bilateral
relations between the U.S. and India funding to both MELUS and ASRC is drying
up. Therefore after four conferences MELUS-India has shifted its focus to more
Indian themes by hosting an international conference at ASRC in January 2006
called Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World (MELOW) with a strong emphasis on
India.
Most Americanists working in India felt the need for an
expansive category that included world literatures and at the same time
emphasized the uniqueness of the Indian experience. The MELUS-India conference
in January 2002 at Hyderabad under the theme "Politics of Location in
Literatures of the Americas" that brought together 90 Americanists from
around the world echoed a deconstructive and neo-historicist theme of "no
fixed boundaries" and reiterated the need for a global perspective.
Scholars acknowledged the inexorable march of the history of ideas and felt
that reconstituted structures made the study of literature in isolation almost
impossible. The study of diasporic and marginalized literatures, the commercial
aspect of cult figures like Madonna, the critique of knowledge, power politics,
the reestablishment of a canon, the green tradition, reconstitution of American
literature syllabi in India, globalizing American studies, emergence of
literary identities, and literary adaptations were some of the themes discussed
at the conference. Issues of English formalism, symbolism, imagery in literary
works, quite popular in the 1970s and 1980s, were largely missing from the
conference.
In the last
three years the socio-political reality both in the United States and the world
has undergone a racial change. Some of the major concerns in American
literature shifted from identity and ethnicity to cultures and conflict. To add
to this bewildering change American funding to American Studies was virtually
stopped as ASRC was seen by Washington as “a den of leftists.”[xlii] Before ASRC closed down completely the Melus India 2006 Conference was held in
January. It brought together some 67 Americanists under the theme “Dialog
Across Cultures: Bridging Differences in American Literature” where scholars
debated about the commensurability or incommensurability of dialogue across
cultures. Most participants spoke on lesser known American writers such as
Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Carl Van Vechten, Irvin Morris, Louise Erdrich,
Cynthia Ozick, Luis Valdez, Jessica Hagedorn, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan,
Irena Klepfisz, Naomi Shihab Ny, Diana Abu-Jaber, Jhumpa Lahiri, Julia Alverez,
Rudolfo Anaya, Jade Snow Wong, Monica Itoi Sone, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Edwidge
Danticat while only a few on mainstream writers like Walt Whitman, William
Faulkner and T.S. Eliot. Some even spoke on American and Indian versions of
Shakespeare, Dalit women and Oriya Diaspora in the United States. These
concerns of scholars highlighted a shift in American scholarship from
mainstream writers to minority and lesser-known writers. Also there was a
greater preoccupation with nationalism and regionalism as demonstrated by the
MELOW International Conference on the 7th January 2006 under the
title “Dialog Across Cultures: India and the World.” Many scholars employed
methods used in cultural materialism, Marxism, lesbian and postcolonial
theories to draw conclusions.
In recent
years there seems to be a heightened awareness to critical theories, which have
allowed scholars of American Studies in India to transgress boundaries that
exist between traditional disciplines such as literature, history, anthropology
and philosophy. As methodologies proliferate new themes acquire importance
amongst non-American scholars working in the areas of American Studies. It is
now possible to read scholarly essays on themes such as 'memory lost in
transition,' 'looking for a homeland abroad,' diasporic intimacy, enclosures
and erasures, 'a woman must write herself,' 'your body must be heard' (apropos
Kamala Das), political interference, history and identity politics, racial
discrimination, hybridized transnational/national identities, multiculturalism
and borders of categories.
This has
also affected the teaching of English in Indian universities as well. The smug
complacency and near sleepy ambience of departments of English in the 1970s and
1980s that were teaching canonical British texts, have given way to a new
enthusiasm at restructuring undergraduate and postgraduate syllabi in English.
This restructuring involves introduction of new Indian writing in English,
reclaimed American and British literatures and their new critical practices,
Continental and other literatures such as Australian and African. But as with most
restructuring this too is not free from teething problems. Literary texts,
critical material on them and even faculty willing to teach the texts are hard
to find. Many professors complain about subaltern politics/Marxist
agenda/feminist lobby legitimating one methodology or the other. Apart from
these there are lobbies of Americanists, Germanists, Francophiles, ABVP-backed
revisionists, Nehruvian socialists and campaigners for Stephanian novelists who
want to privilege their own favorite texts.
Remnants of
the reformed school of New Criticism constantly debunk the new reconstitution
in academic syllabi and the new critical procedures in literary methodology,
discouraging students from accepting a new course.[xliii]
Indian publishers too find the reconstruction a little bit confusing. Scholars
are somewhat diffident or shy to write about new critical theories or
procedures. These are some of the problems experienced on campuses of Delhi,
Hyderabad and Chandigarh universities. Provincial and state universities in
India are so intellectually dispossessed and their libraries economically
starved that they are incapable of handling these issues at all.
Methodologies
impacting upon the disciplines of American Studies are also affecting the
adaptation of American writing in regional languages and the writing of fiction
per se. Translators and novelists and scholars in American Studies in India are
now recognizing the importance of what Foucault calls the
"discontinuities" of history and its multiple time spans.[xliv]
It is possible to see the emergence of what Linda Hutcheon calls the study of
"historiographic metafiction" fore-grounding the intricate
relationship between history and a socio-political context in India.[xlv]
The fictional quality of history or the palimpsest of history has been made
popular by writers like Salman Rushdie
(Midnight's Children, Shame and The Satanic Verses), Carlos Fuentes (Terra Nostra), Milorad Pivic (Dictionary of the Khazars) and Gabriel
Garcia Marquez (A Hundred Years of
Solititude and Milan Kundera (L'Insoutenable
legerette de l'etre and L'Immortalite).
In an essay, "Palimpsest History" Christine Brooke-Rose distinguishes
between different varieties of palimpsest histories made possible in the 1980s
by the above-mentioned writers and by writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Robert
Coover, Umberto Eco and others.[xlvi]
And in recent years there has been a significant rise in the study of the
above-mentioned writers using emergent methodologies in deconstruction,
subaltern, post-colonialism and feminism.[xlvii]
Changing Trends in American Studies
A steady
decline of Cold War ideologies and a growing dominance of multiculturalism and
pluralism in the United States have brought down ideological barriers to
communication between American and international scholars. A greater emphasis
on ethnicity and diversity in American universities is easily associated with a
subaltern approach to history in Asia and Africa that valorizes non-elitist or
popular culture. Let me quickly add that not everybody in Asia or Africa is a
subaltern, just as not everyone in America is a multiculturalist. Nonetheless
it is hard to ignore the new emergent perspectives. American Studies in an era
of globalization will get a new lease on life and attract a wide cross-section
of scholars and intelligent laymen in American history, culture and foreign
policy.[xlviii]
Post-World War
II globalization has given a new direction to international economy. Sir
Anthony Giddens at the Reith Lectures in New Delhi insisted that contemporary
globalization is characterized by a greater independence of societies and not
just economic institutions and economies.[xlix]
He argued that economic influence during the Internet and WTO era was more
complex and the flow of capital and information faster than in the world
economy up to World War II. Since American companies and entrepreneurs are the
key players in the world of information technology, globalization has been
dubbed in some quarters as Americanization. Studies about the social and
cultural consequences of information technologies on postmodern and diasporic
communities are already quite advanced in the United States. In the next
decade, interest in these areas outside the U.S. would most likely be a part of
American Studies.[l]
Recent international exchange programs between U.S. and foreign
universities in Europe and Asia will increase in coming decades taking American
Studies beyond the confines of its national boundary. Many exchange programs
make it mandatory for undergraduate students to spend a semester or a year at a
U.S. university and complete its American Studies program. The United Kingdom
has over ten programs in American Studies and most programs require students to
complete one year at the University of North Carolina, University of Minnesota
or the University of California at Santa Cruz. Rutgers University and Brown
University have exchange programs with St. Stephen’s College, India. The University of Wyoming has international exchange
programs with Denmark, United Kingdom (Nottingham) and Utrecht. Keio University
at Shonan-Fujisawa Campus (Tokyo) has language and American literature summer
programs with Stanford University and College of William and Mary. These
student and academic exchange programs not only provide students and faculty
from foreign universities to study in the U.S. but also give American students
and faculty a chance to understand their own country from a foreign
perspective. The globalization of American Studies will involve a new
partnership between American and non-American scholars enriching the very
nature and scope of American Studies. Many universities are now evolving their
own programs in American Studies. In September 2000, St. Stephen’s College Delhi started the American Studies Program (ASP) with the
active support from United States Information Service (USIS) and the U.S.
Embassy. The Program has enrolled twenty-five students who will study American
History, Culture, Literature and Political Science from the faculty of St.
Stephen’s College who will be doubling up as teachers in their own respective
departments. Periodic visits from U.S. Americanists will give both direction
and focus to the ASP.
Popular perceptions and cultural caveats about the U.S. that seemed
immutable during the Cold War era have surprisingly altered today. The United
States and countries such as China, Japan, Korea and India have understood the
need to cooperate with each other in the area of e-commerce, information
technology, nuclear non-proliferation, ecology and intellectual property
rights. Since individual enterprise has
begun to compete with corporate and state-controlled enterprises, individual
initiative has acquired a new significance. This is true of American Studies as
well. For instance the establishment of ASA in Japan and MELUS in India have been
primarily the result of individual initiative. Similarly the return of ASRC,
Hyderabad from the brink of extinction has been due to the sustained efforts of
its director. It is possible to say that individuals with an understanding of
American Studies can prove instrumental in raising local funds and encouraging
American Studies in the twenty-first century outside the United States.
American Studies need to develop the
vocabulary to analyze the taxonomy of ‘war on terror’ just as it once took
cognizance of ‘culture wars.’ It must be able to resolve the competing claims
of contradictory metaphors on the American cultural landscape— metaphors such
as ‘empire’ and consensual mind or melting pot and homeland security.[li]
Though some centrist and revisionist studies of the empire distinguish between
American exceptionalism of the twentieth century and European imperialism of
the nineteenth century, they nonetheless see the phenomenon of globalization as
a decentered form of American empire.[lii] Earlier attempts to understand America as
empire was to deny its geographical expansion by claiming a temporal identity
in the phrase the American Century.[liii]
Today there is an attempt to mask the notions of the empire in the Christian
rhetoric of democracy which David Harvey calls abstract universalism.[liv] The attempt to understand the term ‘empire’
has now spawned a new area of inquiry called ‘empire studies’, which on the
surface tires to redefine American studies but in reality wants to
institutionalize the term empire.[lv] Now
within the discipline of American Studies scholars feel a sense of urgency to
expose the “racism of empire” and unmask the methods by which the Arabs and
Islam are “racialized” within the U.S. and outside in detention center such as
Guantanamo, Abu Gharib detention centers.[lvi]
If American and non-American scholars can go beyond the centrality of the
nation and encompass broader transnational issues of human rights,
international law and universal ethics, then American Studies and American
literary culture can both be rejuvenated.
[i] Many of the ideas in this paper were first presented
five years ago at American Studies Association Conference 2000 at Detroit from
October 12-15, 2000 under the title “American Studies in the World: An Indian
Experience.” Since then many changes have taken place both in the United States
and the global reality. This paper as been updated to include ideas relating to
the rise of the American Empire and a unilateralist American foreign policy and
the effect of both on the discipline of American Studies.
[ii]The sense of bewilderment and crisis is felt both by the American people
and peoples in many parts of the world. Today the United States occupies not
only Afghanistan and Iraq but threatens other nation states who are either
different politically, or who do not endorse its values and priorities. Within
the US the government has become more authoritarian curtailing civil liberties,
human rights and the freedom of many immigrant communities. The U.S. public has
become increasingly disillusioned with the role of America as the policeman of
the world and this might lead American foreign policy towards greater
isolationism in world affairs. See Francis Fukuyama, “Leaving Iraq and Bush regime.” The Daily
Yomiuri, December 11, 2005, p. 4. Fukuyama writes: “A recent poll by the
Pew Center for the People and the Press shows that a slightly larger number of
Americans now think that the United States should mind its own business than in
1976, right after the Vietnam War. This is particularly true of Bush’s red
state conservative base. It is not just the Bush doctrine that cannot be
sustained in the light of this reaction to the war; even a return to moderately
international foreign policy that seeks more multilateral forms of engagement
for the United States will be difficult.”
[iii] Amy Kaplan, “Violent
Belongings and the Question of Empire Today: Presidential Address to the
American Studies Association, October 17, 2003, American Quarterly, Volume 56, Number 1 (March 2004) pp.1-2).
[vi] The Bush Doctrine advocates a benevolent hegemony of
the United States in world affairs by spreading democracy and preempting or
crushing terrorism or tyrannical regimes. See Francis Fukuyama, “Leaving Iraq
and Bush regime.” The Daily Yomiuri, December 11, 2005, p. 4. Fukuyama’s
comments: “What will be left of the Bush legacy in the wake of an exit from
Iraq? The so-called ‘Bush Doctrine’ was based on the idea that the United
States would use its predominant power to exert a kind of ‘benevolent hegemony’
over the world, acting preemptively to stop terrorist threats and building
democratic institutions to guarantee the peace once tyrannical regimes were
defeated. The Bush administration could believe this was possible for a brief
moment after Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, when the U.S,
public was ready to support costly foreign interventions to protect itself. But
the president launched an optional war in Iraq, and chose to govern not on the
basis of a broad coalition, but by mobilizing his conservative political base.
He has, as a result, no reservoir of good will left now that his policies
appear to be failing. There is a real danger that the United States will turn
toward greater isolationism in the wake of a withdrawal from Iraq.”
[vii] The recent immigrant riots in France are an ample
testimony to the fact that the African and Arab immigrants have faced decades
of neglect and ill treatment. Now these ‘dregs of society,’ to use Interior
Minister Nikolas Sarkozy’s phrase, are expressing their anger and frustration
by burning cars, schools and hospitals.
[viii] Times of India
October 6, 2001, "Angry India 'waives' sanctions waiver," by
Chidanand Rajghatta. Upset by shift in
American policy in South Asia after the September 11 terrorist attack India
asked America to de-link it from Pakistan in lifting of sanctions being
considered by the U.S. Congress. The
Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha was so piqued by the U.S.
attitude of gratuitously clubbing Pakistan with India under democracy sanctions
that he rebuffed Senator Joseph Biden by canceling a meeting on 20 minutes
notice and then accepting an interview on CNN. Biden, heading the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, a avowed critic of Pakistan's nuclear
proliferation did a volte face and proposed a long term alliance with Pakistan
pushing for a one billion dollar recovery package for Central Asia. India
believes that such a package will be finally used to strengthen a weakened
Pakistan in the hope that it will not support terrorism against the U.S.
[xi] Amy Kaplan, “Violent
Belongings and the Question of Empire Today: Presidential Address to the
American Studies Association, October 17, 2003, American Quarterly, Volume 56, Number 1 (March 2004), p.2.
[xii] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (Vintage Books, New
York, 1979), p. 9.
[xiii] Jurgen Habermas, The Postnational Constellation (Polity Press: Cambridge, 2001),
pages xviii and 57. Habermas writes, “The idea that the regulatory power of
politics has to grow to catch up with globalized markets, in any event, refers
to the complex relationships between the coordinative capacities of political
regimes, on the one hand, and on the other a new mode of integration:
cosmopolitan solidarity” (p. 57).
[xiv] Fredric Jameson, “Notes on Globalization as a
Philosophical Issue," The Cultures
of Globalization, pp. 54-77.
[xv] Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi eds., The Cultures of Globalization (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1998) Preface pp. xi-xvii.
[xvi] Ronald Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory
and Global Culture 1994 rpt; (London: Sage, 1992), pp. 177-8.
[xvii] Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
[xviii] James Clifford, “Traveling Cultures,” Cultural Studies. Ed. Lawrence Grossberg
et. al. (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 96-112.
[xx] Most Marxist economists, such as Prabhat
Patnaik tend to agree that we need to exercise caution in going ahead with the
decade-old economic policy of liberalization given the unique history of
framing economic policies and the complex social and class structure in India.
He argues that economic policy was framed in the 1930’s during a period of
economic nationalism, which though unsustainable now cannot be jettisoned in
favor of ‘marketist’ response backed by capitalist forces and agencies such as
the Fund and the World Bank. He writes, “Other developing countries like India
adopted such strategy, properly speaking, only after independence when the
consolidation of the international economy had not progressed far and when the
process of internationalization of capital in our sense was still in its
infancy.” He believes that though globalization may find supporters within the
country in capitalists and affluent middle class, by and large the process,
will be “detrimental to the working class, not only transitionally but over a
protracted period.” He further elaborates that a “neo-mercantilist strategy is
not easily replicated nor as workable in the context of world recession, nor
necessarily desirable in the context of India’s extant democratic structures.
Is it possible then for an economy like India to evolve a response of its own?”
[Prabhat Patnaik, “International Capital and National Economic Policy: A
Critique of India’s Economic Reforms,” Economic
& Political Weekly, 29, number 12, (19 March 1994), pp. 686-8].
[xxii] Amy Kaplan, “Violent Belongings and the Question of
Empire Today Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, October
17, 2003,” in American Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (March 2004) Kaplan
writes: “A nation of immigrants, a melting pot, the western frontier, manifest
destiny, a classless society— all involve metaphors of spatial mobility rather
than the spatial fixedness and rootedness tat homeland implies…. How many U.S.
citizens see themselves as members of a diasporic community with a homeland in
Ireland, Africa, Israel, or Palestine—a place to which they feel spiritual or
political affiliation and belonging, whether literally a place of birth or not?
Does the idea of America as the homeland make such dual identifications suspect
and threatening, something akin to terrorism? Are you either a member of the
homeland or with h terrorists, to paraphrase Bush? And what of the terrible
irony of the United States as a homeland to Native Americans?” (pp. 8-9). The
neo-conservative belief of democratizing the world has been attacked from
within the western world by the discipline of anthropology. Clifford Geertz
believes that man does not possess universal nature but universal potential
that are realized in specific situations. Since he does not possess a composite
universal nature it becomes difficult to appeal to a collective ethical core in
moments of crisis. We constantly see scapegoats in others and, symbolically or
literally, sacrifice them in the hope of eventually exorcising our own phobias,
guilt-ridden fantasies and vices. Kenneth Burke, who sees a process of
“vicarious atonement” at work here, has analyzed this process of exteriorization
and symbolic renewal at length. Burke believes that the scapegoat becomes
a “chosen vessel” that is employed by
others to “cleanse themselves” by heaping the “burden of their iniquities” on
it. The violent intensity with which the ritual of displacement is conducted
decides the “curative” power of the scapegoat. The victim and the residual
violence become not only instrumental in restoring individual and social
healing but fusing with each other in a symbiosis. In other words we first
project our guilt, mortification and inadequacy on a person then we malign and
ostracize him. In this manner we regain health and well-being. This complex
process of identity formation works in the following manner: first to malign
difference, then to elevate it to the level of a religious sacrifice, and then
feel empowered. Can we escape this process of conceptualization? Is there a way
out? Burke suggests that identity may be constructed not in terms of solidarity
but in terms of a “fundamental kinship with the enemy,” someone against whom we
define ourselves. Self and other can stand facing each other like prismatic
mirrors refracting unseen aspects of each other. Even while we are constructing a sense of
difference we are inextricably intertwined, sharing somewhat similar histories,
undergoing not altogether divergent fates. Burke goes further to suggest that
aspects of the self may be seen as aspects of the other and vice versa. This
implies in Derrida’s logic to understand and appreciate the ways in which the “other”
constructs itself as different aspects of the ego or “I.” Also see Susan
Gillman, The New, Newest Thing: Have American Studies Gone Imperial?” American
Literary History, Vol. 17, No.1, 2005, pp. 196-7.
[xxiii] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire,
( 2000), pp. 14-15. Also see Walter
LeFeber, The New Empire ( 1963) that gives a revisionist account to the
Spanish-American War,
[xxiv] See Susan Gillman, The New, Newest Thing: Have
American Studies Gone Imperial?” American Literary History, ibid. p.
198. Gillman writes, “The point is that
field called empire studies, drawing on the same history of additions
and revisions to other, allied disciplines , is now in the process of
institutionalization.”
[xxv] Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the
British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, (New York: Basic
Books, 2002), p. 370. Ferguson’s revisionist history of the British Empire
rebukes America for its denial of empire and exhorts it to take the mantle of
the white man’s burden (pgs 54 and 370). Also see Amy Kaplan, “Violent
Belongings and the Question of Empire Today Presidential Address to the
American Studies Association, October 17, 2003,” in American Quarterly,
Vol. 56, No. 1 (March 2004), p. 3.
[xxvi] See Neil Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer
and the Prelude to Globalization (Berkley: University of California Pres,
2003). Smith argues, Whereas the geographical language of empires suggest a
malleable politics—empires rise and fall and are open to challenge—the
‘American Century’ suggests an inevitable destiny…How does one challenge a
century? US historical dominance was presented as the natural result of
historical progress…It followed as surely as one century after another. Insofar
as it was beyond geography, the American Century was beyond empire and beyond
reproof.” (p. 20).
[xxvii] David Harvey, New Imperialism,
(London: OUP, 2003), pp.42-49)
[xxviii] Harvey, New Imperialism, ibid, p.
26.
[xxix] Harvey, New Imperialism, ibid, pp. 47-50.
[xxx] Michael Igntieff, The Burden,” The New York Times
Magazine, 5 January 2003, pp. 22-54.
[xxxi] Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire:
Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, (New York: Metropolitan,
2003)
[xxxii] See Joshua Micah Marshall, “Power
Rangers,” New Yorker, 2 February 2004, pp. 83-88.
[xxxiii] See Kaplan, “Violent Beginnings,” ibid p.
4. J. M. Coetzee maintains that empires always fear their own demise—One
thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not
to die, how to prolong its era.” See J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the
Barbarians, (New York: Penguin, 1982), p. 31.
[xxxiv] Amy Kaplan, Violent Beginnings,” ibid.,
pgs. 5 and 12-16.
[xxxv] Amy Kaplan, “A Call for a Truce, American Literary
History, Volume 17, No. 1, 2005, p. 144.
[xxxvi] Mark Twain, “To the Person Sitting in
Darkness.” 1910. In Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist
Writings on the Philippine-American War, ed. Jim Zwick, (Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 1992). Twain writes that, “There must be two Americas: one
that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom
away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then
kill him to get his land” (pp. 33-34).
[xxxvii] Giles Gunn, Globalizing Literary
Studies, PMLA, January 2001, Volume
116, No. 1, p. 18.
[xxxviii] Stephen Greenblatt, “Racial Memory and
Literary History,” p 52 in PMLA,
January 2001, Volume 116, No 1.
[xli] William Mulder et. al., “An
Exchange on American Studies in India,” Indian Journal of American Studies,
1.1 (1969), pp. 73-89.
[xlii] Refer to M.G.
Ramanan’s Inaugural Presidential Address at the Melus India Conference,
Hyderabad, January 5, 2006.
[xliii] Suvir Kaul, "The Indian Academic and
Resistance to Theory," in Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan, ed., The Lie of the Land: English Studies in
India, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 207-28.
[xlv] Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of
Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, (NY: Routledge, 1988); Hutcheon,
Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox, (London: Methuen, 1984).
[xlvii] Manisha Roy, Bengali Women, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992);
Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan, Real and
Imagined Women: Gender, Culture and Postcolonialism, (New York: Routledge,
1993); Stephanie Jamison, Sacrificed
Wife/Sacrificer's Wife: Women, Ritual and Hospitality in Ancient India,
(Oxford: OUP, 1996); Nita Kumar ed., Women
as Subjects: South Asian Histories (Virgina: Univ of Virginia Press, 1994).
[xlviii] Some of the future research subjects
related with American Studies may well include some of the “suppressed” forms of knowledge that M. Foucault has
talked about.
[xlix] Anthony Giddens, “Runaway World,” Reith Lectures, New Delhi, 1999.
[l] The impact of globalization and information
technology on American Studies could allow research scholars to access data on
environment, social welfare and labor legislation both from rich and poor
nations. This could develop a more balanced approach to environmental norms and blame for environmental pollution. However free access to
information could lead to plagiarism more difficult to identify as evidenced
through recent newspaper reports on American universities. See “U.S. colleges
track down ‘copy-and-paste-cheats” The
Japan Times, May 15, 2001 page 9.
[li] Amy Kaplan, “Violent Belongings and the Question of Empire Today
Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, October 17, 2003,” in
American Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (March 2004) Kaplan writes: “A nation
of immigrants, a melting pot, the western frontier, manifest destiny, a
classless society— all involve metaphors of spatial mobility rather than the
spatial fixedness and rootedness tat homeland implies…. How many U.S. citizens
see themselves as members of a diasporic community with a homeland in Ireland,
Africa, Israel, or Palestine—a place to which they feel spiritual or political
affiliation and belonging, whether literally a place of birth or not? Does the
idea of America as the homeland make such dual identifications suspect and
threatening, something akin to terrorism? Are you either a member of the
homeland or with h terrorists, to paraphrase Bush? And what of the terrible
irony of the United States as a homeland to Native Americans?” (pp. 8-9). The
neo-conservative belief of democratizing the world has been attacked from
within the western world by the discipline of anthropology. Clifford Geertz
believes that man does not possess universal nature but universal potential
that are realized in specific situations. Since he does not possess a composite
universal nature it becomes difficult to appeal to a collective ethical core in
moments of crisis. We constantly see scapegoats in others and, symbolically or
literally, sacrifice them in the hope of eventually exorcising our own phobias,
guilt-ridden fantasies and vices. Kenneth Burke, who sees a process of
“vicarious atonement” at work here, has analyzed this process of
exteriorization and symbolic renewal at length. Burke believes that the
scapegoat becomes a “chosen vessel” that
is employed by others to “cleanse themselves” by heaping the “burden of their
iniquities” on it. The violent intensity with which the ritual of displacement
is conducted decides the “curative” power of the scapegoat. The victim and the
residual violence become not only instrumental in restoring individual and
social healing but fusing with each other in a symbiosis. In other words we
first project our guilt, mortification and inadequacy on a person then we
malign and ostracize him. In this manner we regain health and well-being. This
complex process of identity formation works in the following manner: first to
malign difference, then to elevate it to the level of a religious sacrifice,
and then feel empowered. Can we escape this process of conceptualization? Is
there a way out? Burke suggests that identity may be constructed not in terms
of solidarity but in terms of a “fundamental kinship with the enemy,” someone
against whom we define ourselves. Self and other can stand facing each other
like prismatic mirrors refracting unseen aspects of each other. Even while we are constructing a sense of
difference we are inextricably intertwined, sharing somewhat similar histories,
undergoing not altogether divergent fates. Burke goes further to suggest that
aspects of the self may be seen as aspects of the other and vice versa. This
implies in Derrida’s logic to understand and appreciate the ways in which the
“other” constructs itself as different aspects of the ego or “I.” Also see
Susan Gillman, The New, Newest Thing: Have American Studies Gone Imperial?” American
Literary History, Vol. 17, No.1, 2005, pp. 196-7.
[lii] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, ( 2000), pp. 14-15. Also see Walter LeFeber, The
New Empire ( 1963) that gives a revisionist account to the Spanish-American
War,
[liii] See Neil Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the
Prelude to Globalization (Berkley: University of California Pres, 2003).
Smith argues, Whereas the geographical language of empires suggest a malleable
politics—empires rise and fall and are open to challenge—the ‘American Century’
suggests an inevitable destiny…How does one challenge a century? US historical
dominance was presented as the natural result of historical progress…It
followed as surely as one century after another. Insofar as it was beyond
geography, the American Century was beyond empire and beyond reproof.” (p. 20).
[liv] David Harvey, New Imperialism, (London: OUP, 2003), pp.
47-50.
[lv] See Susan Gillman, The New, Newest Thing: Have American Studies
Gone Imperial?” American Literary History, ibid. p. 198. Gillman writes,
“The point is that field called empire
studies, drawing on the same history of additions and revisions to other,
allied disciplines , is now in the process of institutionalization.” Also see
Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and
the Lessons for Global Power, (New York: Basic Books, 2002), p. 370.
Ferguson’s revisionist history of the British Empire rebukes America for its
denial of empire and exhorts it to take the mantle of the white man’s burden
(pgs 54 and 370). Also see Amy Kaplan, “Violent Belongings and the Question of
Empire Today Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, October
17, 2003,” in American Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (March 2004), p. 3.
[lvi] Amy Kaplan, Violent Beginnings,” ibid., pgs. 5 and 12-16.
