American Culture Between Myth And Ideologydocx

=== AMERICAN CULTURE BETWEEN MYTH AND IDEOLOGY ===

TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY of BRAȘOV

AMERICAN CULTURE BETWEEN MYTH AND IDEOLOGY

Magdalena Dragomir Negru

Coordonator : M.A. Dissertation

Lect.univ.dr. CristianPralea

Introduction

American culture major themes make the subject of the present research study, from a cultural studies standpoint. American studies, the multicultural turn, new history perspectives, American exceptionalism , religion and political perspectives are the themes that will support my arguments regarding the persistent elements in US cultural identity.

The complex mix of features that make up the American identity are , as I argue in this study the result of ideological currents that shaped the American Mind starting with its early beginnings. American studies movement is an important element in the cultural environment of the US and as I point out in the first chapter, the approach on the issues that continue to challenge the American culture will be regarded from a cultural standpoint and new history perspective. The major themes of American culture are the ones that lay the foundations for the national ethos.

The discourses of power that gave legitimacy to expansion and supremacy in the international sphere enforced a sense of security, confidence and righteousness in the American conscience, elements that beyond any other political interest were the ones keeping together the fragmented pieces of the American Psyche. The ideologies that have built this ethos for the past two centuries fall apart with the raising consciousness about the American past after 1960s. The old paradigm, built on the ideological framework with historical foundations dissolves with the revolutionary era. What is left is a confused fragmented conscience fighting the new challenges arriving from the growing multicultural individualism of a society lost between materialist cravings of a consumerist society and the power discourses fighting to disguise its true imperialistic habits inside ideological constructs.

The crisis in American Studies movement is the crisis of an entire society, left baron of what they were taught to be fundamental about their identity as a nation. The arguments in this study will bring out to the surface the persistent elements that construct ideologies meant to give sense and purpose and justification in this blend of contradicting theories.

The discourses that once provided grounds for the belief in the uniqueness, greatness and the sense of rightness in the world for the American people are now empty and flat. How will America survive this crisis? Can American Mind recover and find a common ground to rebuilt its self-confidence and start fresh from the ashes of the revolutionary era?

The argument that builds here lays on the fact that once the mythical origin stories vanish and crimes from the past acknowledged, this awareness of the truth about history changes the way in which the Americans see themselves and silent issues and invisible people contribute to the raise of a new American conscience.

The point in revealing the stories from the past is to deconstruct the old artificial framework about the American people. The purpose of mentioning how major crimes in the American history were justified is not to incriminate the Americans as a whole, but to point out to how the most basic, legitimate aspirations of a nation can be trashed when the exercise of liberty is loosened, and attention from the bigger picture is withdrawn by false ideological constructions.

The belief that there is a genuine, honest and decent moral foundation in the American people receives validation from the recurring theme of the American dream that through its changing forms since the early beginnings, accompanies Americans on their journey.The American dream theme that does not escape confiscation from the ideological framework though, appeals to the most genuine beliefs that are fundamentally human.

UNIT ONE

CHAPTER I:THE AMERICAN MIND

The chapter introduces the way in which the American intellectual efforts have influenced and contributed to an original current of American origins, a current that has its roots in the genesis of the American nation. The initiation journey of the American thought goes through a series of stages that mark its development. The chapter goes through the determining events that have shaped the crystallization of the original traits that marked at that timethe American culture as unique and original.

The first step in this pursuit is to locate the historical American intellectual quest for an identity and provide a disambiguation of the mythical constructs that surround this quest. The next step is to identify the main themes that have dominated and influenced the development of the American culture. Further, in this chapter I will discuss the idea of the existence of a main perspective in the American cultural realm, a mainstream cultural trait constituting the American identity and culture until recently. The subject that I will argue upon is the fact that today the mainstream culture faces a big challenge coming from the growing diversity of the people. The multicultural challenge, stemming from the growing diversity of the American people cannot be ignored anymore, or covered by ideological strategies of the past.

Voices of the people reduced to silence find their way to penetrate the American conscience, people made invisible before by the mainstream political ideology assert their cultural diversity and celebrate their spiritual and cultural rebirth.

My goal here is to point out to the fact that the discourse of multiculturalism that has been present in the American global performance in the past 20 years does not always meet with institutional and societal change.

But the change is unavoidable and the return of ideological mainstream policies, although still persistent in the whole American spectrum, its backed up by the raising consciousness of the past historical mistakes and misinterpretations.

Introducing the American studies perspective

My pursuits for the research rely on the cultural studies perspective. The approach of the subject from a cultural standpoint includes the American culture as a whole. American Studies or better said, the American Cultural Studies identifies from its beginnings with American Cultural trade of thought.

With this in mind, the journey to identify the core elements that define the American culture is ready to set sail. The research maps some of the main elements that contribute to the identification of theories and ideologies that shaped the American culture.

American Studies between myth and symbol

The chapter on American Studies will provide a short historical overview of the movement going through its developmental journey since the early 20th Century. American studies first started as an imaginative quest to identify and map the elements that essentially differentiated the “new world” culture from the “old Anglo-Saxon “one. The battle between two was the battle for a unique, originalidentity that was truly American. The enthusiasm of Vernon Louis Parrington, whose efforts brought to light the workentitled Main Currents in American Thought (1927), would be the touchstone for the American Studies movement, from then on becoming one of the movement’s founding father. The major concern in delineating a clear-cut distinction from the Anglo-Saxon trade of thought was common for the entire American intellectuality. The beginnings of the American Studies reveal a strong inclination towards exceptionalism, in trend with the general discourse of the era.

The movement was characterized in this incipient stage by a strong commitment to bring out the best works of literature and history in order to mapthe American experience and raise the true intellectual conscience of elites in America. The focus was directed on the intellectually usable past.

American scholarsof the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s had put together several assumptions :

“There was an American Mind that was more or less homogeneous, a single entity.

The location was the New world- mapping thus the culture as new and original

The American Mind was to be found in anyone American, but was represented by its leading names: Williams, Edwards, Franklin, Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Twain, Dewey, Niebuhr, and provided what was called “The Great Books”

American Mind is an enduring form in the American intellectual history, with its original themes: Puritanism, Individualism, Progressivism, Pragmatism, Transcendentalism, and Liberalism-American past.

America is revealed through its high culture, even if American Studies allow the study of” popular culture” names such as Davy Crockett, Daniel Webster or Buffalo Bill. America was relevant through its “high culture” and should hold a “privileged” position in the American Studies scholarship and teaching “

Thus, they had put together the basis of the old-school paradigm.“The collection of “exemplar” books set fundamental aims of inquiry within the intellectual history paradigm, defining its outer boundaries.”

Moving on through the 1950s and 1960s American Studies movement go through a rapid era of expansion; the corporate organization would provide an era “of plenty “.The 1960s American Studies would expand their scholar approaches to Black Studies, Popular Culture Studies, Folklore Studies, Women Studies Ecology, Film, Ethnic Education Studies, etc. This era would provide the American scholars with new perspectives given by the Civil Rights and the radicalactivists. There is a change in the consciousness of the people in the larger culture that would put stain on the old intellectual synthesis. The change of attention from the airy myths and symbols would drive scholars’ attention towards more earthy matters. The real America is revealed all of the sudden and subcultural studies focusing on different aspects of American life flourish. The enthusiasm of the ‘flower power” age would not integrate the entire culture as a whole, though.

Seen from the old-school perspective, American Studies movement has been in decline ever since, says Gene Wise. Nevertheless, regarded from the 21th century standpoint, it seems that it had finally found the right track.

With the 1960s, the approach in all areas of intellectual work has gone through a tremendous turmoil and the efforts to bring to life the voices of the many do not always find enthusiasm in the mainstream structures. The revolutions in the streets receive the backing up fromthe intellectual effort that took more than just a decade to cement in the American culture. The slow move towards a multi-cultural American society started then and still struggles for acceptance.

Gene Wise, in his “Paradigm Dramas”, maps an important moment in the American Studies in the middle of the 1960s: a moment when its legitimacy is in question with the accusation of being “an elitist white Protestant male enterprise which tended to reinforce the dominant culture rather than critically analyzing it”. The accusation seems legitimate, after all the cultural studies’ purpose was to be the one with multi-dimensional views. Gene Wise’s affirmation that the cultural studies movement will never recover from the earthquakes of the 60s seems pertinent if we think of the great efforts made to give shape to this academic enterprise that is American Studies.

With the demise of Parrington’s paradigm, the lack of a larger cultural synthesis, with no clear image of a usable past, American Studies will no longer stand on the frontier of scholarship, and according to Gene Wise will have a “parasite” role in the academic field, drawing their criticism across academic disciplines. Wise observes that with the 1960s American studies have also lost their initiative in explaining contemporary America.

The 1970s though have conducted to a different stage in the American studies-the institutional stage brought by Gordon Kelly’s work on the social functionality of the literaturein the cultural analysis, thus changing the standards in literary criticism. His contribution along with the introduction of anthropological and sociological perspectives brought by Berger and Luckman would shift the perspectivesof American Studies. This direction would place the focus on the individual’s contribution to culture, encouraging people to discover the way in which historical choices led the Americans to construct reality in their own ways. The important aspect on the contribution of the 1970s to the movement isthat these perspectives prove to be instrumental.

The new era for American studies will prove to be more self-critical, much more thoroughgoing in the critique of academy than previous Americanists.The multi-dimensional approach in analyzing any issue gives the cultural studies is legitimacy in comparison with any other academic field.

The problem with the approach of the American culture just from the view point of the white, male monolithic culture is obvious now, in our age, but to think of the American culture as multi-cultural, to approach multiculturalism is a late 1980s issue. It was only in the 1989 that the multiculturalism term appears in publishing.

Therefore, we see that although the transition to a multiculturalist society is not a simple process, there are many coordinates worth considering; the change within institutional environment, political discourse and inside communities. People’s attitude towards cultural issues is not fixed, it can be changed, says Ronald Takaki, we shouldn’t let our prejudices affect our lives. Many contemporary scholars and historians that deal with the issue of multiculturalism argue that we cannot speak of a multicultural society in America as long as there is just one language officially recognized in the U.S.: the English language. Prof. Robert Bellah contends that being multicultural means to have several entirely different cultures, as it is the case of Belgium with the Dutch speaking communities and the French speaking communities that are two entirely separate cultures. United States with one official language does not fit into that category. The Americans, he continues, are not so different in their ensemble, the melting pot has managed to gather under the same flag many different identities blended and mixed under a singular mainstream culture. “Multiculturalism is a great idea but I don’t think that it is terribly real”.

From its beginnings as an idea, throughout its development as a School of thought today, many competing discourses and events have shaped its development as a recognized scholar inquiry. The people that started the idea of American studies or the ones that gave shapeto an American cultural tangible identity are the people that started the search of a unified American Mind.

The main objective that the pioneers of American Studies had was to imagine the existence of a unique, original trade of thought of American origins, needing to be rooted in the past. This elitist movement needed a definition of its place in the world, needed to construct a history. This intellectual enterprise relied much on the existence of an American Ethos, of a voice that spoke for all Americans.

The American Studies must be regarded then first of all as a cultural phenomenon in its entirety, meaning that much of its existence coincide with the conditions that made possible the existence of Americans as a nation, the movement’s genesis resemble the genesis of the American nation. The design of the movement is the result of the intellectual effort to identify the unique and original road of the American Mind, blending at one point with the corporate interest much like with the first colonies.

Up to a certain point, the impression of a constructed destiny for the Americans was a persistent one, the feeling that they could determine their own destiny and follow their own way, a determining feature that endured to this day.

There is though a dual status of this written history as a literature of modern myth. This modern myth gives centrality and purpose to the nation of complex fusion of ethnicities and identities. This conglomerate gains a common ground that keeps togetherthe idea of an existing singular, extraordinary, determining feature that makes the American culture unique in the world.

Following Gene Wise’s Paradigm Dramas we discover the driving elements that shaped the American mind in that era, starting with Vernon Louis Parrington. The fact that the American studies have as foundation a work like American Thought coincide with the unified effort of a young nation to historically attest their original experience and map their nation in the global political background .

These efforts are the force behind the crystallization of coherent political discourses that put the bases of a strong and unified but at the same time diverse nation. Theexceptionalist view, a much preferred discourse in the beginning of the American studies trade of thought, although a contested view now, is nevertheless a remaining element that persistin the background.The cultural environment in the United States still maintains such views through its media, popular culture, political discourse and corporate industry.

They create the environment that we may call the “American Mythology”. The complex concept of American beliefs and mythical structures comprises a series of symbolic practices and constructs that embellish the American cultural life. These practices find their way to express through different channels, popular culture for example is an important medium that connects the people and intermediates the symbolic exchange. The political spectrum is also a serious “stage of performance” for the symbolic uses in the American society.

In the essay called Myth and symbol in American Studies, Bruce Kuklik notes:

“One of the primary purposes of the American Studies movement is to demonstrate the way in which the ‘collective images’ and symbols can be used to explain the behavior of people in the United States”

For instance, the ‘myth of Eden ‘comes as one of the central myths in the American experience.” The myth and symbol school would identify it as “isolationism”and the great underlying postulate of American foreign policy.

What is observable about the American Studies, from today’s perspective of course is that what looked like a dead end for the 1970s time is now in fact the right direction for the current and school of thought. One of the criticisms that the Marxist theorists like Stuart Hall have had against the myth and symbol schools was in fact the one-eyed perspective that this approach had. The essence of this criticism is the need of the American Studies to become free of the undirectional view that has surrounded the current up to that point. With Kuklick, “the picture” restores, what had seemed to be catastrophic for the current, embraces a new direction, what looked like a closed road, opens up in a better perspective. The interesting issues that Kuklick observed and discussed are, among others, the myth and symbol approach to literature. Parrington and the other American Studies scholars had tried to envision and draw a distinctive American trade of thought, one that was destined to drive away from the British culture, showing the exceptional nature of the new nation. The old paradigm, embedded with self-centered discourses of the exceptional nature of the Americans expandednow to new coordinates (which reflect a new era for the American Studies), to new dimensions and perspectives. A true American Studies pursuit will always question everything, keep an open mind, criticize and analyze things from a multi-dimensional perspective, even if that means criticizing itself. The post-structuralist approach is indeed much more fruitful initspursuit.

An important thing to note here is the fact that the destiny of the American Studies movement will always relate to the American Society, it will interfere with the leading ideologies that prevail in the American culturalbackground. Thus looking back to the way in which things have worked out for the American Studies we can easily trace and compare the stages that marked its development. The recent multi-cultural approach is the proof of the way in which these two interrelate: in theory, for the past 20 years we see a switch from the “melting-pot” description of the American cultural field into the much more embracing “cultural quilt”. I mentioned “in theory” because in practice things evolve in a much slower pace. The change is there, it just takes more than just saying that Americans are a multi-cultural nation. It means to actually deal with the problems that this “transition” generates.

The Multicultural Turn

The shift in the American culture lies in the obvious change in the way the American Studies scholars cast their attention on the neglected up to then people and subjects. We see in the late 1980s and 1990s , the move from exceptionalism and idealistic approaches of the American culture to the non-existent up to then subjects of African Studies, Feminist and women studies, Native American Studies and so on.

Up to that point, which I choose not to attach any specific categorization (post-modern or any other it may be), the scholars have not adequately understood and appreciated the ways in which race, poverty, gender or ethnicity have shaped American identities and communities.

The multi-cultural turn, the shift to multiculturalism as an ideology is a recent event in American culture, until 1988 there was no reference of the term, in 1989 only 33,and a rapid raise after that.

Nathan Glazer’s We are all multicultural now, brings up the topic of multiculturalism in America. He argues that the term multiculturalism is a newcomer in the American vocabulary. The word is absent from the original Oxford English dictionary, but it makes an appearance in the 1989 revised edition. What does that tell about the concept of multiculturalism?

Ronald Takaki observes: „in the 21st century we will all be minorities, with no majority race in America” and “diversity will be our destiny, we see it unfolding before our very eyes”.

In contrast with these opinions of multiculturalism we find RobertBellah’s, writer and historian, arguing that America is a monolithical culture, a culture that denies difference because is hard to maintain diversity in a country. He affirms: “Multiculturalism is a great idea but I don’t think that it is terribly real.” He calls multiculturalism and the emphasis on culture today as ideological.

His arguments are grounded on the confusions that are often made between concepts like culture and identity. “Identity is not the same thing with culture but it can be just as important”, he says calling the example of the difference between the identity of Mexican born in America and the identity of the Mexican immigrants.

His point in the debate of multiculturalism is that there is a lack of social democracy, and that the increased individualism does not help people’s sense of communion and respect towards others people’s identities. In his opinion, the multiculturalism ideology is an ideology dominated by the market and the state and propagated by the media.

“There is a false consciousness about our diversity”, and there is a “mantra” that the Americans hear repeatedly, that they are diverse but instead this politics is a dividing rather than a solidary one.

Multiculturalism as an ideology tells that Americans are all so different, but just below the identity politics Americans are not. There is so much common ground for all Americans that are not first generation Americans because American culture has always shaped and melted the ethnic identities in order to fit in the big picture.

The discourses that embellish the American cultural and political space do not match the reality of American life.

Ronald Takaki and his “ master narrative”

In his book, A Different Mirror, A history of multicultural America, Ronald Takaki talks about a “master narrative” of the American culture. He defines the master narrative as the powerful, popular but mistaken history of America. According to him, the demography is challenging the master narrative because according to it many people in America do not look Americans.

He argues that master narrative exists in the everyday life, in the schools curricula, in the news media, entertainment media but also in the news language. The point when this narrative turns into an insidious one is where Takaki warns of; thinking of the Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, when all Japanese in America became the enemy and half of them were killed.

The historian identifies that the approach to multiculturalism before was from the point of view of the political correctness: the view that “we are all Americans”. This affirmation is challenged by the fact that according to the master narrative not all the people look Americans, not all people in U.S. fit to that definition.

The argument here is that in this era, we are witnessing a multicultural revolution, and a revolution implies institutional change, a redefining of what being an American means, a definition that is more inclusive and hence more accurate. Furthermore he argues, it is ok to be multi-ethnic, is ok to be diverse, and that is what multiculturalism is about. The goal Takaki sets for his work is to teach a more accurate history of America, as a nation peopled by the world.

The turning point in his view was the WW II, when Americafaces the fascist and starts to question its own domestic racial issues and starts questioning its own democratic attitudes in opposition with the fascist regimes it was fighting.

The ideology of the master narrative involves a denial of diversity; is the ideology of the melting pot. To support his multiculturalist shift thesis he quotes Barack Obama on his inaugural speech “we are a patchwork heritage” explaining that people take pride on their patches, because they allow them to take pride on their diversity, creating the space for them to study and know different people.

Takaki’s ‘master narrative’ comes in line Howard Zinn’s efforts to reveal the truth about history. The theories they provide aim at reinterpreting the past events of American history in order to insure a better understanding of the future. The perspective provided by the two, contradicting the lies that have been said about America stems from an individualistic and minority approach to history as opposed to the former mainstream discourse. Zinn, in one of his many conferences often argued on how much excitement and hysteria would arrive when new history about the truth about Columbus or Nagasaki and Hiroshima was spelled.

This master narrative is the one obscuring the different existing identities in the American country, starting with the American natives and ending up with the multiple waves of immigrants that arrived there pursuing their personal American dream . This narrative, obscured the existence of all other identities living there except for the white protestant male one.

Myths and ideologies in America

The search for significance in the American myths leads the scholars to the identification of a mythical structure in the American ethos.

Myths have always worked inside language, conveying messages, hiding nothing but distortingthe reality. According to Levi Strauss, myths are the product the contradicting values inside a culture and the way myths work is” to symbolically resolve the contradictions trough mediating symbol chains”. According to him, a high importance lays upon the interpretations of cultures through myths.

Roland Barthes take on ideology tells us that it is not entirely concealed, and is subject to scrutiny through its cultural manifestations. If we fallow these theories, we get closer to Althuser’s theory on ideology and we see that its double mirror role establishes the relation to the reality of people’slives, certifying on the way things are and could not be otherwise, getting people to operate on their free will. Therefore, in a way both myths and ideologies perform the role of distorting reality in order to convey and attribute meanings inside a given culture. Taking a look on the work of contemporaneous thinkers in the past 20 years, there is a strong commitment to disambiguate with the past historical myths and ideologies that were built starting from there.

Howard Zinn argues that the deemphasizing of the genocides that took place in history is an ideological choice, it would be a useless pursuit of course in trying to condemn the past, but we have to be aware of the fact that the conquest and the murders were hiding behind the ideology of progress. Focusing on the heroes of the traditional history does nothing but obliterate one from seeing the larger picture.

Zinn often argued that people in America are very surprised when they go through the American history, they are in shock, thinking “this is bad!” when they realize that Americans are not the good guys they were taught in schools that they were. One of the important legacies of Howard Zinn was his call addressed to the fellows thinkers to make the issues that are made invisible by political ideologies or media strategies affiliated to those ideologies, to make those issues visible.

The strongest ideology persisting in U.S. is the ideology of wars. The subject of wars in people’s perception is a huge subject. A sore subject for Americans is about the lost wars. Howard Zinn version of how the ideology constructs around war theme makes a lot of sense. Vietnam war is the biggest taboo, in my opinion, since the genocide of native peoples, it is a silent, shameful episode in American history for the governments since the war. According to Zinn, Vietnam gave the War a bad name, the government invented afterwards the formula of “Vietnam syndrome”, meaning some kind of sickness pointing to the movement that began to question government’s policy.

Americans, Zinn often wrote, I believe they have a common sense about the issues of wars and of killing people in the world, they are truly compassionate about these things, but that is exactly why government ideology tries to prevent them from knowing the reality. Moreover, the truth is, the American people, once the Vietnam era has passed learns very little about Vietnam War in schools.

But the scar from the face of America still remains and eversince , the war policy has tried to mend it and makeit disappear. The quoting of George W. Bush, about the war in Irak (nick named as Bush War I), is brilliant and supports his argument about the “good war ideology”:

“The specter of Vietnam is buried forever in the sands of the Golf Peninsula”.

Even worse happened with another shameful war, the Korean War where around 3 million Koreans and 120 thousand American soldiers died.

One of the things that Zinn tells about is what he learned from the experience of warwas:

“…when you start with the assumption of them being the bad guys and you being the good guy, once the mind is made up and that decision made, from that point on everything goes, from that point on you’re capable of any atrocity, because you’ve made a decision a long time ago that you’re on the right side, you don’t keep questioning.”

The People’s History of the United States, his influential work changes the focus of the historical works and concentrates on the facts of history that has been ignored before. The book is a landmark in American cultural background; it calls for a need of a historical perspective for every one.

He also called for the young people to understand that what they have is a beautiful country but it has been taken over by men who have no respect for the human rights or constitutional liberties. The American people, he contends, are basically decent and carrying and their ideals are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which says that all have an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The history of America, represents a struggle against corporate robber barons and war makers, to make those ideals a reality.

Voices like Howard Zinn or Ronald Takaki came as a minority voice in the American mainstream cultural historian scene. The scene was occupied by people who wrote other things, dominated the ideological landscape and this is the reasonwhy he strove to speak louder, more eloquently and more passionately.

Through history, people can clarify things, he said, they can prepare for the dealing with the duplicities of the real world.

UNIT TWO

CHAPTER II AMERICAN DISCOURSES

This chapter discusses the major discourses that marked the American cultural space since the early beginnings and their influence in shaping the mainstream ideology about America.

The American frontier thesis, one of themost enduringof all mainstream discourses owes its articulation to Frederick Jackson Turner. The major arguments have as foundation the existing mainstream ideology of the “civilizing” role of the westward expansion thus coming in line with the ideology of the époque. To counteract this theory, I will analyze this frontier thesis form the point of view of the new history arguments that bring up in discussion the down sides of this westward expansion; the shortcomings that are not revealed in the enthusiastic early fever of expansion over the “wild” territories.

The New Frontier subchapter discusses the way in which the myth of the frontier, of the West has proved to work in the political discourses, re-incarnating it in an ideology about the expansionistic civilizing role of Americans, this time in the world.

The new frontier invoked by JFK , crushes under the revolutionary era, but this time the frontier consisted of segregation, oppression, racism and social inequity.

The Frontier Thesis according to Frederick Jackson Turner

One of the theories that prove to be the most enduringis the frontier thesis pertaining to Frederick Jackson Turner at the beginning of the 19thCentury, that gave special attention to the determining factor that created the American character. In his theory, the frontier plays a crucial role in the developing of the American nation: the perpetual move towards west and the permanent link with the wild and untamed territory is what forged the Americans in their genesis as a nation.

“This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating the American character. The true point of viewin the history of this nationis not the Atlantic coast but the Great West.”

Turner, like many other American intellectuals of his time was striving to draw a clear picture of the American identity and his pursuit was seeking at that time to make a clear cut distinction between the Anglo-European and Americans. Of course , we must bear in mind that at the moment there was clearly a tendency to treat the United states as Britain’s sister so Turner’s comparative approaches and identification as against the English inheritance is perfectly legitimate. “The Frontier in American History “remains a seminal book to this day from the point of view of the identification of a determining character for the American identity. However, there is also a remarkable absence and I must be fair to admit that all intellectual work before the 1960s have the same problem: they perceive, accept and attest the American society as the white society, completely ignoring the elements that contributed to the making of an American identity. But we must not be too harsh in judging them from this point of view, after all, that was the norm that the white American society was seeking to make, holding on to their English roots ( seeds in Turner’s words) and at the same time attesting a different identical portrait for America.

This observation is valid for the American Studies scholars also, as I will point out in the next chapter, their efforts to map the features of the American intellectual work is similar, it is always an identification against the British dominance even at the intellectual level but at the same time ignoring entirely the multi-national character of the American nation. That is in part due to the main discourse of the time, America was after all a huge melting pot seeking to Americanize rather than accept the difference that the multitude of cultures inside U.S. was already making. These clarifications were in order to start a narrower analysis of the Frontier, in fact in order to apply the cultural studies approach in discussing the Frontier in the American culture.

Ronald Takaki defines the westward expansion as a “manifest destiny” descending from the primordial “city upon a hill”. This manifest destiny, means the destiny to expand westward, against the Indian lands, but also against Mexico, and even Asia.

At that point, the religious load was not that powerful anymore, there was more a patriotic thrust, expanded within it was the idea that Americans are all superior politically, because they are a democracy.

The story of America seen from the corporate expansion in the West, more specifically from the railroad expansion all over the American country has as much to do with failure, as well as it has to do with success. The reason standing behind the logic of westward expansion, the growth is according to cultural historian Richard White in so many cases “a dumb growth”. The story of the railroads is linked with the extinction of the bison’s and to all the misfortunes of Indians that were subjugated by the US.

The New Frontier

In the work entitled American Contemporary Culture, Sara Antonelli, a professor of Anglo-American literature at Universita di Roma Tew and responsible with the cultural programs at the American Studies Center in Rome, makes an interesting synthesis of the American cultural environment from the 1960s period until now.

The references to the American culture closely interweave with instances of the American literary background.

“The new frontier proposed by JFK in his presidential program as well as the invitation –which is at the same time a warning to recognize the United States supremacy on the international political stage respond perfectly to Robert Frost poetry, read in Washington at the inaugural speech ceremonial.”

Sara Antoneli makes an interesting observation about the way in which, a poet marks the political objectives sliding a national myth into poetry whilst skillfully combining political discourse about the exceptional civilizing mission of the United States.

“’we are faced now with a new frontier: the frontier of the 60s …and I ask to each and every one of you to be a pioneer of this new frontier’, was saying Kennedy at the Democrat Convention in 1960. In a complete consonance with the nation’s myths, he wasn’t looking at the frontier as a border, but more as a limit that had to be crossed”

The important detail that she marks here is the permanent use of national symbols that the political world makes in order to justify its acts, a permanent check and search for approval and justifications. A keen observer of the American culture, Sara Antonelli observes the close relationship that JFK presidency has with the cultural background and the attempt to fulfill the Jeffersonian dream about a republic based on politico-cultural relationships. Kennedy’s words that “art reveals the human fundamental truths that must serve as the touchstone of our thinking” tell the world that culture was stepping on the front stage of the political background of the country.

The brave process of social reconciliation that JFK begins, through his fervent implication in the Civil Rights Movement, is abruptly ended, just like in Martin Luther King;s with a violent assassination. Seems like his permanent reference to the past, to the ideals of Abraham Lincoln have turned out to be tragic in terms of similarity of destinies.

The 60s and the beginning of the Lyndon B. Johnson presidency marks another important landmark in American society: the Vietnam War. It is a landmark because of the traumatic experiences that are without precedent in the American history. The wars that America has experienced until then were always justifiable, at least from the mainstream perspective, the strong discourse behind the armed mobilization was undeniably unquestionable. The American people’s solidarity in time of crisis would provide support for what was inevitably going on behind scenes. However, the Vietnam War, although had started as a justification against communism sheds new lights in the history of American wars. This war puts the Americans face to face to undeniable atrocities, humiliation and defeat. The echoes from the Correa war and the massive media propagation of cruel footage from the war zone blow out a different reaction from the American people.

The crisis that the American society goes through in this age is without precedent, leaving a big scar on the face of America. The époque from the beginning of the 1950s up to the 1970s, as a paradox ,mark the American culture as the best that was written, invented and composed. The social unrest and the rebellion against the system produce what is often called as the Cultural Revolutions. The multiple revolutions in fact give the American culture the start towards a rather Cultural Renaissance, were the chance to affirm ones spiritual, cultural and social freedom is at hand. The voices of many, oppressed by the mainstream “master narrative” come to life now, revealing the new multifaceted identity of America.

Voices of immigrants, of American Natives, Chicano, Puerto Ricans and so on come to the forefront, mainstream culture-“the culture of the whites” –as it is often referred to, is deconstructed, the creativity and congeniality prevail regardless of the social background they come from. The true face of the country, the real one, reveals itself marking institutional as well as cultural change in America.

Therefore, the 1950s to 1970s period is the touchstone for the American culture. The growing diversity of America cannot be ignoredanymore; the celebrated freedom of the individual is finally unleashed. The frontier crushes under the revolutionary turmoil, but this time the frontier represents segregation, oppression, racism and social inequity.

The frontier theme as we saw has become a symbol for the Americans, once the last territorial frontier was removed, there was no other to cross but the imaginary ones. This setting for the crossing of new frontiers has become a pattern in the American thought.

American Exceptionalism

The discussion on this chapter’s topic is based on the research I have pursued among the lecture series of Howard Zinn, at MAT University. This research would not be complete without a discussion over one of the most important aspects that seem to be a pattern in US. The political stage was, since the birth of this nation’s state, a common ground shared with the religion. Historian Howard Zinn states in an interview for MAT University:

“Very early on, there’s an association between what the Government does and what God approves of…”

Howard Zinn presents throughout his written work and during his lectures at the various occasions that he was present, an authentic and objective version of the history of United States. The colonists in the Plymouth colony, he argues, convinced that their pursuit was the right one, that God had given them such speedy and glorious victory over such “proud and fierce enemy” were the ones that “founded” this God and political tight association in U.S.

“That process of not being just a city on a hill, that moving out, that process of expanding…continued, and that is a persistent fact in American history, going all the way back to its first settlers then coming down to this present day, a persistence of expansion to somebody else’s territory and occupying that territory, dealing harshly with the people who resist that occupation..”

Establishing the source of this behavior in the American politics is very important, a touchstone in understanding the major historical events that US contribution will shape a few centuries later.

“This notion of God, of being divinely ordained, that notion continued, …and later on in the nineteenth century, on the eve of War for Texas, against Mexico, journalist J. O’Sullivan coins the term of ‘manifest destiny’ by saying: ‘it was our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions..”

This term will follow the American political behavior all the way up to the present times, the term gives substance, authority, and justification and as Zinn very well observes, it turns out to be an important tool in the construction of the imperialist America.

The historian continues with his theory by citing president’s McKinley decision to invade the Philippines in the 20th century:

“The decision to invade the Philippines came one night, when he prayed and God told him to take the Philippines… This is a very dangerous kind of idea, once you have God’s permission to do what you want to do, you need no criterion of human morality….and with President’s Bush, if you don’t mind me skipping a lot of history .(…) You know President Bush has a special relation with God (…). Invoking God is very common all the way through the American history, but Bush has made a specialty of it. “

The work of the contemporaneous historians challenges old discourses in history, their accounts on the historical moments try to bring out the truth about miscomprehensions in the history.

Quoting a reportage that a Palestinian newspaper had published about one of Bush’s declarations:

„God has told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I stroke them and then he instructed me to strike at Sadam, and now I’m determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”

The point that the historian makes with his numerous citations from the political stage is to prove how closely woven are the relationships between the political life and the religious beliefs of Americans. By analyzing the most common declarations like the ones cited before, that for the present times might seem unimportant or maybe outdated, he shows that nothing is lost in the state-religion relationship.

Zinnnotices that people situated very high in the governmental scalier “seriously believe that God is the source of governmental power”. By strategically linking the authority of the government with the divine intervention interferes with the Declaration of Independence that gave the government authority to the people. He detects a dangerous pattern that politicians follow: the shift from a power to the people to power given by divinity.

Zinn’s discussion takes us to the conclusion that: “this idea of God being the source of governmental power is always dangerous in anybody’s hands and is dangerous when people call themselves ‘the chosen people ‘.”

After all, he observes: the Nazi’s had written on their soldier’s belts : “Got mituns” , “God with us”, and considering the Devine ordination that they strongly affirmed they had, we all know what they did..

“This would be the American Sanctuary, The victory now at the end of World War II, gave United States the right to exert upon the world the full impact of the influence for such purposes as we see fit” is a quote from a declaration that Henry Loose, the owner of Time, Life and Fortune Magazines, the owner of a huge chain media enterprises, one of the most important non-governmental people.”

Moving on to the political strategy of US in the 20th century, there was always a threat to be dealt with as a justification to US expansion, and after the communist threat was over, the terrorism threat is the most recent justification. In this spirit, the logical deduction is that ever since the first settlements in North America by the pilgrims, the pattern of expansion over other people’s territory is the policy and the rule.

“What we do in relation to terrorism does not quite meet the requirements of having an effect, a serious effect on terrorism..” This statement shows the reality in US foreign policy and confirms the imperialist behavior.

The paradox in relation to this imperialist expansion is the justifications and need to make these expansions acceptable by the World. If we check the past, ever since WWII we can find enough evidence that US was always posing and playing the positive hero role: the savior from different imminent evils: the communism, the terrorism, etc. But if we analyze the issue in relation with the religious pattern that characterizes US’s internal and foreign political life, there is no surprise in finding out the archetypal constructions resembling the Christian moral from the Bible. An American president will always take the role of the God’s given savior against some enemy, the political speeches will always be filled by excerpts from the Bible or in the least resemble Christian moral percepts. After all, all great conquerors had a noble purpose behind their deeds.

RELIGION IN AMERICA

The subject of religion in this specific cultural space is in fact a subject that has been debated since the birth of the United States as a nation. As Howard Zinn points out: there is a close connection between the political and the religious ever since the birth of the American nation. But the religious chapter in the American culture is far more extensive . In his essay “Religion today”, Charles Taylor proves that what passes on as the secularization of the religion and a rupture between the religious and the state, might not be an adequate description for the United States.

The departure from the enchanted world of religious beliefs and practices has led to new forms of belief, more personal and much more individuating. The past comes in contrast with the present; the dark ages of religious belief give way to a new age, a much more individualizing religious experience. With this in mind, we may claim that in fact, the religious life of the western world has changed towards other forms of religious belief and practice that are very much influential to this day.

The case of the United States comes as a reference point for the way in which “the trend” evolves in the past two centuries. The fact that democracy builds on religious grounds is also acknowledged here, Charles Taylor’s work gives an insight of the close relationship that the state and church had and still have. Following this idea, it is obvious that religious experience for Americans is grounded in the foundations of the nation as a whole. The religious and the laic come together on the American ground and give birth to a new spiritual dimension.

“The place of religion has certainly changed in our contemporary world, but many of its oldest forms are finding a new place in this altered universe. The danger that we be focused on their previous forms that we fail to see the most important developments of our time”

The religious beliefs and the unique context that made possible the religious democracy in America, make out of the American experience an extraordinary revolutionary step in the religious sphere also. The individualist character of the American makes way for an individualization of religious experience also. Following Taylor’s essay, we may deduce that the religious faith has not lost in intensity, is just changed in new forms of worshiping that are more individuating, thus sometimes even more sincere. The faith is not gone; it comes now from the free will of the individual that has the right to choose what he or she feel they should believe in.

Once again, Americans appear as original in their quest adding to the general picture that makes them unique in the world. Here of course we have to be fare in acknowledging of the unique circumstances created by the revolutionary western context that helped them in their development. The breaking down of old dogmatic order in the religious grounds creates precedents for the rest of the western world also.

Another observation that is in order here, relating to the religious aspect of the American life, although fragmented and fractured, in the general picture anyone has to agree with the statement that American people are a “people under God”. This leads us to the next supposition that the religious aspect of the American people is one that should not be undervalued when discussing the American culture.

As Zinn and Taylor had observed in their researches, the close relationship between the political life and the religious beliefs is a defining feature of the American people. The question here is whether the “enchanted world” that Taylor talks about has really become “disenchanted”.

NEW PERSPECTIVES IN HISTORY

The pursuit of of historians like Howard Zinn, Ronald Takaki, Richard White brings a new perspective on history that does not fit with the old history that all Americans are taught in schools and hear from political discourses for generations. This perspective sheds a completely different light on the way things actually happened in history.

This new history is not an easy to accept fact in the American society, if we think of the generations that get from school the “master narrative” as Takaki has put it. However, here is where these new perspective historians make sense of their version of the history, of the truth that they discovered about the historical facts, by providing logical, documented proof and moreover they also provide explanations on the ideologies that stood behind certain actions in history. The systematic approach to the way in which racism is born in America that belongs to Ronald Takaki is one of the most relevant in this respect.

This useful knowledge of the past that helps people make sense of the present is what George Orwell was referring about the control of history “whoever controls the past, controls the future, and whoever controls the present controls the past”.

The importance of history, according to Howard Zinn, can be seen from the degree of controversy that is raised when people start writing or speaking of a different history. This controversy about new history, he argues, reaches hysteria when the scholars have to re-think the re-teaching of Columbus or the Hiroshima or Nagasaki. These scholars consider the new history as “a war of aggression against the western political tradition” and that “civilization is at stake”. Therefore, the new history does not go free of resistance. Looking at this new history from Michel Foucault standpoint, we may consider the questions on historical ideologies as a practice of liberty. According to him, liberty is never insured by the institutions and laws that are intended to guarantee them. The institutions, he argues, are almost all of them capable of being turned around not because they might be ambiguous but simply because ‘liberty’ is what must be exercised.

Epilogue :TheAmerican Dream

Many theorists and scholars have dealt with this term in their works; sometimes the meeting was inevitable when getting near subjects related to the American culture. Some may even say that the American Dream embodies in fact the entire ethos of this nation and that, upon the dream that has nevertheless taken many shapes in the entire cultural history of the nation, rests in fact the genesis of America.

“The American Dream tells this story, in the process shedding light on virtually every major dimension of American culture, past, presentand future.(…) There is no better way to understand America than by understanding the cultural history of the American Dream.

According to cultural historians like Jim Cullen, the dream finds articulation only in 1931, when James Truslow Adams first coins it in his work TheEpic of America..Cullen’s work makes objective observations upon the origins of the dream myth : the pilgrims have first imagined a nation that would follow their religious ideals and would also create a community that would live up to those ideals “the city upon a hill”, blending thus the political and religious into a nation like no other before .

The words of Truslow Adams that describe the dream as:

” that American Dream of a better, richer and happier life for all of our citizens of every rank which is the greatest contribution we have made to the thought and welfare of the world”.

stands in line with the trend of the époque, the beginnings of the efforts to shape the Cultural history of Americafind their materialization in the 1930s . The exceptionalist view, a major theme, is deeply rooted in the ideology embraced by America at that time. Nevertheless, it is obvioust that the concept of the American Dream is very much alive in the American Psyche.

However, as it often occurs with everything in history, the meaning of the Dream has changed in time and has taken many forms and shapes. The historians point view has often associated the major mythical themes of America with whatis commonly described as The Dream.

The approach on such a subject is somewhat sensitive due to its difficulty in defining the term. According to cultural historian Jim Cullen, a definition of the American Dream is very difficult to grasp in the written form, for it seems to have been “virtually taken for granted”. Furthermore, he notes, no one felt ”compelled to fix the meaning and uses of a term that everyone presumably understands, which today appears to mean that in America anything is possible if you want it badly enough ”.

But as it turns out ,very often this concept will turn out to be a dull one, the ones that live The American Dream in itself turns out to be “a dull and pointless job” to cite Jim Cullen from his work “Born inthe USA: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition”. His approach would compare the iconic, mythical figure of Elvis, seen through Bruce Springsteen “glasses” with John F. Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby’s destiny, both American Dreamers: so-to-speak end up realizing that the dream is in fact an unworthy one.

The sower story of Elvis, succumbed in the dreamless sleep of narcotics, taking refuge there and ultimately being buried in them, had shed a different light on the mythical power of the dream. Jim Cullen synthesis brings in discussion the oddest comparison: Elvis-the king of rock and roll and another king, the spiritual father of the Human Rights Revolution: Martin Luther King. They share, according to Cullen not just their southern provenance and black religious upbringing but also the American Dream. Elvis lives inside the Dream of fame and wealth whilst Martin Luther King drives away in a theological- philosophical quest meant to change people’s perceptions and encouraging them to aspire for higher ideals. Thus, Luther is the father-preacher of a nation changing that nation, whilst Elvis is the king of tunes, changing the nation’s tunes.

In so many ways, we may say that they touched America and even the whole world. It was a brilliant way to illustrate the essential war of contrasts in the U.S.’s culture. What King does in fact is take the founding principles and turns them into strong arguments against segregation and discrimination in front of law. He is the one that substantiates The American Dream, turning it into a real concept, into a pursuable and achievable goal. For the first time, outside its mythical frame, the Dream becomes a tool; a powerful spiritual means to penetrate the American Conscience. The spiritual father of the black revolution, translates not the Bible words into a Sunday church ceremony, but this time takes a peach with the myth that unites the entire nation regardless of age, race, sex or religious confession : the larger than life nation –symbol : The American Dream.

Conclusions

“What America loves most, needs most… is the myth of itself” Salman Rushdie

A proper way to end this research paper’s topic would be to acknowledge the fact that trying to describe the American culture is a very difficult task. Although the study was focused in bringing forth the changes that have essentially occurred in the past 50 years, it has encountered limitations to some of the approaches. The attempt to draw a conclusions on the way in which the American Studies movement have found a way to surpass the 1960s crisis has encountered the problem of finding a place for the old paradigm in the new one.

In my study I have discovered that in the present research and in my other project dedicated to Issues of Racism in American Native Literature, I have been thoroughly preoccupied with pinning down the faults of American culture but that I have not found a solution for them. The preoccupation for a critical analysis of American culture and the defending of discriminated parts of it can become discriminating in itself. So, as a conclusion although dismayed at the thought of making disappear a personal myth , I wonder: where to, after all being said and done, all mistakes acknowledged and all diseases diagnosed? The push for multiculturalism and the fierce criticism about the” old school “sheds a shadow of guilt on the people and American culture visible up to 1960s. What’s the next step after joining this anonymous meeting ?

Identifying the problems in the American society is an easy thing to do, but identifying the ways in which these problems are to be solved is problematic in itself. This constant fight of opinions, ideologies, and theories is not meant to reassure the cultural realm. The multicultural turn is a big step forward, but the feeling of chaos and turmoil does not escape any approach in this respect. Issues generated by racism and discrimination are still a sour subject in this country. The fight still goes on, the competing identities have not found yet a common ground to meet.

As the quote in the beginning of this last essay suggests, America is a place where mythical constructs have always found a fertile ground to grow. America’s imagination may be perhaps again a solution for the founding of a unified way to solve the multiculturalist Pandora box, but this time in a more honest manner.

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