America's shadow : an anatomy of empire / William V. Spanos.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Spanos, William V.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Vietnam War, 1961-1975--United States.
• Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Influence.
• Imperialism--History--20th century.
• Imperialism.
• History.
• East and West.
• Postmodernism--Political aspects--United States.
• Postmodernism--Political aspects.
• United States.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 287 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2000]

Summary:

• A study of imperialism that stretches from ancient Rome to the post-Cold War World, this provocative work boldly revises our assumptions about the genealogy of the West. Rather than locating its source in classical Greece, William V. Spanos argues, we should look to ancient Rome, which first articulated the ideas that would become fundamental to the West's imperial project. These founding ideas, he claims, have informed the American national identity and its foreign policy from its origins.
• The Vietnam War is at the center of this book. In the contradiction between the "free world" logic employed to justify U.S. intervention in Vietnam and the genocidal practices used to realize that logic, Spanos finds the culmination of an imperialistic discourse reaching back to the colonizing rationale of the Roman Empire. Spanos identifies the language of expansion in the "white" metaphors in Western philosophical discourse since the colonization of Greek thought by the Romans. He shows how these metaphors, and their role in metaphysical discourse, have long been complicit in the violence of imperialism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-272) and index.

ISBN:

• 0816633371
• 081663338X

OCLC:

42021443