American exceptionalism in the age of globalization : the specter of Vietnam / William V. Spanos.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spanos, William V.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

National characteristics, American, in literature.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Literature and the war.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975.

America--In literature.

America.

Literature and history--United States.

Literature and history.

United States.

Physical Description:

xx, 321 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2008]

Summary:

In American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization, William V. Spanos explores three writers-Graham Greene, Philip Caputo, and Tim O'Brien-whose work devastatingly critiques the U.S. intervention in Vietnam and exposes the brutality of the Vietnam War. Utilizing poststructuralist theory, particularly that of Heidegger, Althusser, Foucault, and Said, Spanos argues that the Vietnam War disclosed the dark underside of the American exceptionalist ethos and, in so doing, speaks directly to America's war on terror in the aftermath of 9/11. To support this argument, Spanos undertakes close readings of Greene's The Quiet American, Caputo's A Rumor of War, and O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, all of which bear witness to the self-destruction of American exceptionalism. Spanos retrieves the spectral witness that has been suppressed since the war, but that now, in the wake of the quagmire in Iraq, has returned to haunt America's post-9/11 "project for the new American century."

Contents:

Chapter 1 History and Its Specter: Rethinking Thinking in the Post-Cold War Age 1

Chapter 2 Althusser's "Problematic": Vision and the Vietnam War 35

Chapter 3 Who Killed Alden Pyle?: The Oversight of Oversight in Graham Greene's The Quiet American 57

Chapter 4 Retrieving the Thisness of the Vietnam War: A Symptomatic Reading of Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War 99

Chapter 5 "The Land Is Your Enemy": Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato 145

Chapter 6 American Exceptionalism, the Jeremiad, and the Frontier, before and after 9/11: From the Puritans to the Neo-Con Men 187

Chapter 7 Conclusion: The Vietnam War, 9/11, and Its Aftermath 243.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-306) and index.

ISBN:

9780791472897

0791472892

9780791472903

0791472906

OCLC:

78893319