Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum : an untimely meditation on the American vocation / William V. Spanos.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spanos, William V., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Exceptionalism--United States.

Exceptionalism.

United States.

Political culture--United States.

Political culture.

Democracy--United States.

Democracy.

Physical Description:

xx, 184 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2016]

Summary:

"Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum interrogates the polyvalent role that American exceptionalism continues to play after 9/11. Whereas American exceptionalism is often construed as a discredited Cold War-era belief structure, Spanos persuasively demonstrates how it operationalizes an apparatus of biopolitical capture that saturates the American body politic down to its capillaries. The exceptionalism that Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum renders starkly visible is not a corrigible ideological screen. It is a deeply structured ethos that functions simultaneously on ontological, moral, economic, racial, gendered, and political registers as the American Calling. Precisely by refusing to answer the American Calling, by rendering inoperative (in Agamben's sense) its covenantal summons, Spanos enables us to imagine an alternative America. At once timely and personal, Spanos's meditation acknowledges the priority of being. He emphasizes the dignity not simply of humanity but of all phenomena on the continuum of being, "the groundless ground of any political formation that would claim the name of democracy.""-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Foreword : Witness to the Critical Imperatives of the Interregnum / by Donald E. Pease

The Nothingness of Being and the Spectacle : The American Sublime Revisited

American Exceptionalism in the Post-9/11 Era : The Myth and the Reality

"The Center Will Not Hold" : The Widening Gyre of the New, New Americanist Studies

American Exceptionalism and the Calling : A Genealogy of the Vocational Ethic

Appendix: The Debate World and the Making of the American Political Class : An Interview Conducted by Christopher Spurlock with William V. Spanos.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780823268153

0823268152

9780823268160

0823268160

OCLC:

911920701