Desire Called America , livre ebook

Fordham University Press - Christian Haines

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257 pages

English

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Critics of American exceptionalism usually view it as a destructive force eroding the radical energies of social movements and aesthetic practices. In A Desire Called America, Christian P. Haines confronts a troubling paradox: Some of the most provocative political projects in the United States are remarkably invested in American exceptionalism. Riding a strange current of U.S. literature that draws on American exceptionalism only to overturn it in the name of utopian desire, Haines reveals a tradition of viewing the United States as a unique and exemplary political model while rejecting exceptionalism's commitments to nationalism, capitalism, and individualism. Through Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William S. Burroughs, and Thomas Pynchon, Haines brings to light a radically different version of the American dream-one in which political subjects value an organization of social life that includes democratic self-governance, egalitarian cooperation, and communal property.A Desire Called America brings utopian studies and the critical discourse of biopolitics to bear upon each other, suggesting that utopia might be less another place than our best hope for confronting authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and a resurgent exclusionary nationalism.

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Western philosophy

Literary theory

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Publié par	Fordham University Press
Date de parution	01 octobre 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780823286973
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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A D e s i r e C a l l e d A m e r i c a

A Desire Called America

Biopolitics, Utopia, and the Literary Commons

Christian P. Haines

f o r d h a m u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s New York 2019

Fordham University Press gratefully acknowledges ﬁnancial assistance and support provided for the publication of this book by Penn State University.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019939349

Printed in the United States of America 21 20 19 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

For my mother, Donna M. Haines:

To the moon and back.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction: Impossibly American

A Revolutionary Haunt: Utopian Frontiers in William S. Burroughs’s Late Trilogy The People and the People: Democracy and Vitalism in Walt Whitman’s 1855Leaves of Grass74 Nobody’s Wife: Affective Economies of Marriage in Emily Dickinson Idle Power: The Riot, the Commune, and Capitalist Time in Thomas Pynchon’sAgainst the Day157

Coda: Assembling the Future

Acknowledgments Notes Index

114

205

209 213 241

i n t r o d u c t i o n Impossibly American

“Make America Great Again.” The short-term history of this phrase speaks to Donald Trump’s strange combination of anti-establishment rhetoric, political and ﬁnancial corruption, verbal and physical violence, and popular appeal. It conjures up images of rallies in which racist, ableist, and xenopho-bic cries are delivered with religious fervor. These rallies are a postmodern tent revival in which violent intensity promises to accelerate providence, though a providence that has as much to do with entrepreneurial success 1 as anything spiritual. Trump and his supporters are winners; the rest of the world are losers; and America will return to its appointed position of greatness only if it gives itself over to this fundamental truth. It’s tempting to see Trump’s rise from businessman to candidate to president as unprecedented, and certainly the zeal he inspires in a large portion of the U.S. electorate is quite distinct. That being said, the Trump phenomenon conforms to Stuart Hall’s articulation of authoritarian popu-lism as “an exceptional form of the capitalist state —which, unlike classical fascism, has retained most (though not all) of the formal representative institution in place, and which at the same time has been able to construct 2 around itself an active popular consent.” Hall was analyzing Thatcherism