Exceptional State

by Dawson, Ashley; Schueller, Malini Johar

• ISBN13: 9780822338208
• ISBN10: 0822338203
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-04-30
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Exceptional Stateanalyzes the nexus of culture and contemporary manifestations of U.S. imperialism. The contributors, established and emerging cultural studies scholars, define culture broadly to include a range of media, literature, and political discourse. They do not posit September 11, 2001 as the beginning of U.S. belligerence and authoritarianism at home and abroad, but they do provide context for understanding U.S. responses to and uses of that event. Taken together, the essays stress both the continuities and discontinuities embodied in a present-day U.S. imperialism constituted through expressions of millennialism, exceptionalism, technological might, and visions of world dominance.The contributors address a range of topics, paying particular attention to the dynamics of gender and race. Their essays include a surprising reading of the ostensibly liberal moviesWag the Dog andThree Kings, an exploration of the rhetoric surrounding the plan to remake the military into a high-tech force less dependent on human bodies, a look at the significance of the popularLeft Behindseries of novels, and an interpretation of the Abu Ghraib prison photos. They scrutinize the national narrative created to justify the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the ways that women in those countries have responded to the invasions, the contradictions underlying calls for U.S. humanitarian interventions, and the role of Africa in the U.S. imperial imagination. The volume concludes on a hopeful note, with a look at an emerging anti-imperialist public sphere.Contributors. Omar Dahbour, Ashley Dawson, Cynthia Enloe, Melani McAlister, Christian Parenti, Donald E. Pease, John Carlos Rowe, Malini Johar Schueller, Harilaos Stecopoulos

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Rethinking Imperialism Today	p. 1
Technologies of Imperialism
Culture, US Imperialism, and Globalization	p. 37
Between the Homeland and Abu Ghraib: Dwelling in Bush's Biopolitical Settlement	p. 60
Planet America: The Revolution in Military Affairs as Fantasy and Fetish	p. 88
Hegemony and Rights: On the Liberal Justification for Empire	p. 105
Engendering Imperialism
Updating the Gendered Empire: Where Are the Women of Occupied Afghanistan and Iraq?	p. 133
Techno-Dominance and Torturegate: The Making of US Imperialism	p. 162
Imagining Others
Left Behind and the Politics of Prophecy Talk	p. 191
Putting an Old Africa on Our Map: British Imperial Legacies and Contemporary US Culture	p. 221
New Modes of Anti-imperialism	p. 248
Coda: Information Mastery and the Culture of Annihilation	p. 275
Bibliography	p. 285
Contributors	p. 301
Index	p. 303
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