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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spanos, William V., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Exceptionalism.

War and literature.

O'Brien, Tim.

America--In literature.

America.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xx, 321 p. )

Place of Publication:

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

Language Note:

English

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:

Front Matter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

History and its Specter

Althusser’s “Problematic”

Who Killed Alden Pyle?

Retrieving the Thisness of the Vietnam War

“The Land is your Enemy”

American Exceptionalism, the Jeremiad, and the Frontier, Before and After 9/11

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780791479131

0791479137

9781435658714

143565871X