Flagging Patriotism
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FLAGGING PATRIOTISM RT226X.indb 1 11/10/06 2:43:50 PM RT226X.indb 2 11/10/06 2:43:50 PM FLAGGING PATRIOTISM Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism New York London Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business RT226X.indb 3 11/10/06 2:43:50 PM Routledge Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue 2 Park Square New York, NY 10016 Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN © 2007 by Robert Stam & Ella Shohat Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number-10: 0-415-97922-6 (Softcover) 0-415-97921-8 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-97922-1 (Softcover) 978-0-415-97921-4 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge-ny.com RT226X.indb 4 11/10/06 2:43:50 PM To Stephen Colbert, Janeane Garofalo, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher, Chris Rock, Jon Stewart, and all the other patriotic clowns who have kept us sane in crazy times RT226X.indb 5 11/10/06 2:43:50 PM RT226X.indb 6 11/10/06 2:43:50 PM CONTENts Acknowledgments ix Preface: Love, Hate, and the Nation-State xi 1. On Narcissism and Exceptionalism 1 2. Variations on an Anti-American Theme 63 3. Discrepant Histories of Citizenship 133 4. Political Sense, Cultural Nonsense 179 5. Contemporary Politics and the Crisis of Democracy 229 6. None Dare Call It Patriotism 293 Notes 335 Index 355 RT226X.indb 7 11/10/06 2:43:51 PM RT226X.indb 8 11/10/06 2:43:51 PM Acknowledgments e are grateful to a number of people who contributed to this Wproject in various ways: James H. Stam for his finely tuned and philosophically informed reading of the manuscript; Dana Polan for his witty and knowledgeable commentary; and Jessica Scarlata for her useful suggestions and shrewd analysis of popular culture. Chris Dunn and Richard Porton were also kind enough to read the manu- script, offering insightful and constructive feedback. Patrick Erouart was especially generous in sharing his knowledge of French colonial- ism and its aftermath, while Daniel Levy, in so many conversations, was thoughtful, sending invaluable materials on Franco-American rela- tions. We are also grateful to Tony Kushner, Alissa Solomon, Moncef Cheikhrouhou, Mark Cohen, Evelyn Alsultany, Shaista Husain, Yigal Nizri, Zillah Eisenstein, and Yvette Raby. We are immensely apprecia- tive of our impeccable and resourceful research assistants Alice Black and Karim Tartoussieh. Finally, we are grateful to all the friends and colleagues—too numerous to mention here—who make New York Uni- versity an intellectually exciting place to be. It is much easier to keep in touch with intellectual currents in various parts of the world through the fine work being done by diverse programs and centers, including La Maison Française, the Institute of French Studies, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, Africa House, Center for European and Mediterra- nean Studies, Center for Media, Culture and History, Center for Art and Public Policy, The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Poli- tics, The King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, Center for the Study of RT226X.indb 9 11/10/06 2:43:51 PM x Acknowledgments Gender and Sexuality, and the International Center for Advanced Stud- ies. Finally, we would like to extend our sincerest appreciation to Mary Schmidt Campbell and Randy Martin for their enthusiastic support of this project and for including a portion, titled “Patriotism, Fear, and Artistic Citizenship,” in their coedited volume Artistic Citizenship: A Public Voice for the Arts. RT226X.indb 10 11/10/06 2:43:51 PM Preface Love, Hate, and the Nation-State lagging Patriotism: Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism Fis written at a moment of double crisis for Americans, one exter- nal—anti-Americanism—and the other internal—American self-doubt and division. This book explores the connections between the two cri- ses and the relation of both crises to patriotism. In terms of anti-Ameri- canism, this external crisis has now reached a fever pitch around the world, leading to the ubiquitous question, “Why do they hate us?” Usu- ally, the question implies, “Why do the Muslims/Arabs hate us?” But resentment against the United States, due to the Iraq War, has become virtually universal; it is hardly limited to Arabs/Muslims. Polls show that majorities in most countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America oppose American foreign policy and the U.S. role as self- appointed global “leader.”1 Even many Canadians now find the United States frightening. This opposition at times takes hyperbolic forms, even in “allied” spaces like Spain. According to one Spanish writer, Moncho Tama- mes, anti-Americanism is now the principal ideological current in the world. It knows no frontiers and is more massive than any social movement in his- tory. … Although Americans, who measure everything through the prism of material wealth, like to think it is motivated by envy, in fact it is motivated by the atrocities that have accompanied all aspects of the emergence of the country and by the cultural colo- nialism that they impose on us.2 RT226X.indb 11 11/10/06 2:43:51 PM xii Preface Whether or not one agrees with such judgments, it is important for Americans to know that such things are being said and to weigh the truth or falsity of the claims. The easy, self-flattering answer to the “hate us” question, of course, is that they hate us because they envy our freedom. (Which leaves unexplained why they don’t hate other equally free countries such as Canada, Sweden, or Costa Rica.) Indeed, one jocular response to the question was that “they hate us because we are so ignorant that we don’t even know why they hate us.” In terms of the internal crisis, meanwhile, American self-confi- dence is quite literally “flagging.” Polls show an inchoate sense of disillusionment, with large majorities feeling that “the country is mov- ing in the wrong direction.” Americans are less and less convinced that the United States is truly fair or democratic. According to a 1999 poll, only 19 percent believed that the U.S. government served the “inter- ests of all.”3 Two-thirds of respondents in a 2002 Gallup poll believed that “no matter what new laws are passed, special interests will always find a way to maintain their power in Washington.”4 Events such as 9/11, Enron, the Iraq War, and the response to Hurricane Katrina have undermined American self-confidence, leading some Americans to won- der what there is left to love about America. The events of 9/11 posed the question “Why do Islamic fundamentalists hate us?” Then the Iraq War posed the question of whether “preventive war” was legitimate and wise, or a gigantic moral lapse and strategic blunder. Hurricane Katrina, finally, triggered a crisis in self-confidence, as it became clearer and clearer that despite all the bluster about “national security,” the government could not, or perhaps would not, protect us in a crisis. The same government that could airlift food to the hungry in Afghanistan, that could mobilize helicopters to rescue downed pilots in Iraq, could not marshal its forces to save the dying in New Orleans. All the rhetoric about “terror,” it turned out, was meant to terror- ize us. Iraq was not a threat; we invaded Iraq, it became apparent, not because it was strong but because it was weak. In terms of terrorism, meanwhile, almost nothing had been done to make us safe, and in many ways things had gotten worse. While George W. Bush made it a top priority to talk about security, he did precious little to actually make us more secure. Katrina posed in the starkest terms the question of the basic contract between a government and its people—the contract RT226X.indb 12 11/10/06 2:43:51 PM Preface xiii to protect citizens. When the levees broke, that basic contract failed. Not only did George W. Bush “not care about black people,” as rapper Kanye West put it, but also he did not seem to care about the disaster victims in general. Utterly uncurious, Bush had to be given a DVD of TV reports about the hurricane’s impact four days after landfall. While worrying about losing an American city through terrorism, we actually lost a city through neglect and inaction. What, after all, is government for, if not to protect us, and if not during and after a natural disaster, when? And if we cannot collectively protect one another, who are we, and what kind of “us” do we assume or imagine? Shrinking civil liber- ties, suspect elections results, and the widening inequalities of wealth, meanwhile, led many Americans to wonder about the future of Ameri- can democracy. The signs of a systemic crisis, in sum, are all around us, and all the flag-waving in the world cannot conjure away that deep crisis of legitimacy.