Exceptional State : Contemporary U. S. Culture and the New Imperialism

Explores the role culture plays in legitimating, unsettling, and contesting America's aggressively interventionist foreign policy since 9/11. Exceptional State analyzes 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 movies Wag the Dog and Three 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 popular Left Behind series 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 Culture, US imperialism, and globalization / John Carlos Rowe Between the homeland and Abu Ghraib : dwelling in Bush's biopolitical settlement / Donald E. Pease Planet America : the revolution in military affairs as fantasy and fetish / Christian Parenti Hegemony and rights : on the liberal justification for empire / Omar Dahbour Updating the gendered empire : where are the women of occupied Afghanistan and Iraq? / Cynthia Enloe Techno-dominance and torturegate : the making of US imperialism / Malini Johar Schueller Left behind and the politics of prophecy talk / Melani McAlister Putting an old Africa on our map : British imperial legacies and contemporary US culture / Harilaos Stecopoulos New modes of anti-imperialism / Ashley Dawson and Malini Johar Schueller. Exceptional State' explores the role culture plays in legitimating, unsettling, and contesting America's aggressively interventionist foreign policy since 9/11