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• W4253531310 abstract "Intertexts, Vol. 7, No. 1,2003 Paul Giles. Virtual Americas: Transnational Fictions and the Transatlantic Imaginary. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002. xxi &337 pp. Maria Stadter Fox Paul Giles proposes arethinking of the field ofAmerican Studies, suggestmg thatoldconceptions,shapedandsustainedbyColdWarpolitics,themythof Americanexceptionalism,andessentialistassumptionsaboutnationalidenti¬ ty,arenolongerusefulorvalid,ifindeedtheyeverwere.Heproposesinstead atransnational,comparativeapproachthatexamineshowandwhyimagina¬ tiverepresentations(orvirtualizations)ofAmericaareformed,whatisinvest¬ edinthem,andhowtheyinteractwithcontemporaryculture.Thefirstchap¬ ter lays the theoretical groundwork, defining “virmalization,” discussing transnationalism and national identity, and making astrong case for acom¬ parativeapproach.Heisnotsuggestingthatnation-statesnolongerhave meaning,assometheoristsofglobalizationclaim.Rather,heisinterestedm “theimpUcationsofthisprocessofdisplacement[i.e.,virmalization]forthe constructionof fictionalforms of nationalism” (1) andin“what happ^s when different national formations collide or intersect with each other (5). Inthechaptersthatfollow,Gilesdemonstrateshistransnationalmethod.^ The chapter on Frederick Douglass shows convincingly that Douglass s trips to Britain helped him develop his ideas of fireedom and power away fromanabsolutedichotomyofffeedom/slaveryandtowardparadoxicalor relativeideasoffreedomandcitizenship.InfluencealsooperatedfromAe United States across the Atlantic: British ideas of reform and social or er wereinpartshapedbytheAmericanCivUWar.Throughanunderstanding consistent what might othof Douglass’s situational thinking, Giles reads . t ● u erwisebeseenascontradictory,e.g.,Douglass’sidentificationwithens in Ireland and his hostility towards the Irish inAmerica. In the Melville chapter, Giles shows how MelvUle’s parodies and perver¬ sionsofBritish,especiallyVictorian,novelconventionsilluimnateand denaturalize both American and British culmral and political assumptions. He addresses Melville’s important themes of masquerade and imposture well as the writer’s connections to Arnold, Carlyle, and Hawthorne. WhileGilesiscertainlynotthefirsttonoteHenryJames’sinternational interests, his suggestion that James’s transnationalism, expressed through transgression and transposition, could be better understood if located within the context of contemporary surrealism, is provocative. In Giles’s view, James’s The American Scene resists “national identity” projects typical of a s a s I N T E R T E X T S 1 0 4 American Studies. Robert Frost is instead placed within the context of decadent poetics (forexample,Swinburne).GilesarguesthatinFrostisfoundadialogue between pragmatism and decadence. He links Frost to afetishization of nationalism and discusses Frost’s role in Cold War identity politics, especial¬ ly with regard to Pierre Bourdieu’s “oracle effect.” In his chapter focusing on Nabokov’s Lolita, Giles sees the novel as apar¬ ody of and aparticipation inAmerican Studies of the 1950s. Its troubles with censorship stem from its destabilization on the one hand of an American community standard of morality and on the other of British ideas of class. The chapter on Thom Gunn and Sylvia Plath is weighted towards Gunn. Gunn is understood as working within both an Elizabethan, meta¬ physical British tradition and an American objectivist one. Plath’s case is complicated by fierce debates over who “owns” her, but Giles points out that her poetry is not merely confessional but expresses apowerful collision of two literary and intellectual traditions. Both poets (like Frost and Nabokov) are placed within the context of Cold War cultural politics (specif¬ ically the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the journal Encounter), yet Giles concludes that both elude national identities, in part by not fitting in with national narratives. The chapter on Thomas Pynchon picks up some threads already identi¬ fied in earlier chapters: surrealism, virtual Englands and Americas, and juxta¬ position. Explored in greater depth than in the Frost chapter is the idea of national identity as afetish. Fetish is linked to heresy (by way of perversion) andheresyisshowntobeespeciallysignificantforPynchoninthecontextof his “cultural Catholicism.” In the concluding chapter, Giles repeats that American Studies as afield is in dire need of shaking up, and examines paths it might take and pitfalls t o a v o i d . Somewhat surprisingly, Giles does not deal with two central sources of (virtual) American identity: the Constitution and the Declaration of Inde¬ pendence. This may be because he focuses on the representations of a romantic, primeval, individualist America and aCold War bastion-of-freedom America. Yet these documents powerfully project and define an Ameri¬ cathatmanyAmericansbelieveinoraspireto.ThemythofAmericanexceptionalism which Giles explicidy challenges is closely bound up in these documents, and they would seem to demand atransnational, comparative engagement, including perhaps contributions from legal history and politi¬ cal science. Since Iam acomparatist, this book did not have to work very hard to convince me of the value of comparative approaches. Giles’s work is valuable for its seeking of “alternative genealogies [aside from tautological definitions of nationality] for the disjunctions that can..." @default.
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• W4253531310 date "2003-01-01" @default.
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• W4253531310 title "Virtual Americas: Transnational Fictions and the Transatlantic Imaginary by Paul Giles" @default.
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