Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum: An Untimely Meditation on the American Vocation

William V. Spanos

Published by Fordham University Press 2016

Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum

An Untimely Meditation on the American Vocation

William V. Spanos
Preface by: Donald E. Pease

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823268184

Overview
Contents

About this book

Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum interrogates the polyvalent role that American exceptionalism continues to play after 9/11. Whereas American exceptionalism is often construed as a discredited Cold War–era belief structure, Spanos persuasively demonstrates how it operationalizes an apparatus of biopolitical capture that saturates the American body politic down to its capillaries.

The exceptionalism that Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum renders starkly visible is not a corrigible ideological screen. It is a deeply structured ethos that functions simultaneously on ontological, moral, economic, racial, gendered, and political registers as the American Calling. Precisely by refusing to answer the American Calling, by rendering inoperative (in Agamben’s sense) its covenantal summons, Spanos enables us to imagine an alternative America.

At once timely and personal, Spanos’s meditation acknowledges the priority of being. He emphasizes the dignity not simply of humanity but of all phenomena on the continuum of being, “the groundless ground of any political formation that would claim the name of democracy.”

Author / Editor information

Spanos William V. :

William Spanos is Distinguished Professor of English at Binghamton University, SUNY.Pease Donald E. :

Donald E. Pease is Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities at Dartmouth College.

Reviews

Spanos’s Redeemer Nation in the Interregnum remains a brilliant speculation on the fate of American exceptionalism and a powerful call for insurrection and revolt.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Foreword Witness to the Critical Imperatives of the Interregnum Donald E. Pease Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xxi
Chapter 1. The Nothingness of Being and the Spectacle The American Sublime Revisited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2. American Exceptionalism in the Post–9/11 Era The Myth and the Reality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	42
Chapter 3. “The Center Will Not Hold” The Widening Gyre of the New, New Americanist Studies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
Chapter 4. American Exceptionalism and the Calling A Genealogy of the Vocational Ethic Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
Appendix The Debate World and the Making of the American Political Class: An Interview Conducted by Christopher Spurlock with William V. Spanos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Pages
- Main content: 208
Keywords: Philosophy & Theory; American Studies; Literary Studies

eBook

Published: February 26, 2016
ISBN: 9780823268184