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The Us and Globalisation

Howard Brick

in American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century

At the outset of this chapter, the author, Howard Brick, considers whether, from an American perspective, 9/11 and the ensuing wars represented a rupture in the rise of globalisation in the 1990s or ... More

At the outset of this chapter, the author, Howard Brick, considers whether, from an American perspective, 9/11 and the ensuing wars represented a rupture in the rise of globalisation in the 1990s or whether it emphasized the extent of global reach. Brick traces global forces and relations back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, but he discerns much longer historical tensions between national insularity and international cosmopolitanism in American life, which came to the fore in the 1970s in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and a new economic crisis. Surveying the literature of globalization in the second half of the 1990s, the chapter concludes with a discussion of Thomas Friedman amongst other contemporary critics of globalism, arguing that it is unhelpful to see globalisation as a single, coherent and internally uniform process.Less

America and the World

Mugambi Jouet

in Exceptional America: What Divides Americans from the World and from Each Other

America has long been much more inclined than other Western democracies to defy norms of diplomacy, international law, and human rights deemed against its interests, although these stances have at ... More

America has long been much more inclined than other Western democracies to defy norms of diplomacy, international law, and human rights deemed against its interests, although these stances have at times profoundly divided the U.S. public. Americans were bitterly divided over the Bush administration’s use of torture, its aim to detain alleged terrorists forever without trial at Guantanamo, and its catastrophic invasion of Iraq on grounds later revealed to be false. The Obama administration’s rather different approach to foreign policy proved divisive too. The chapter explores why Americans are far more polarized than Europeans over fundamental issues like war, diplomacy, the United Nations, and human rights. From the ideal of Manifest Destiny to America’s relative geographic isolation, superpower status, and the idea that God chose it to lead the world, Mugambi Jouet’s original analysis explains the interrelationship between the different aspects of American exceptionalism shaping U.S. foreign policy.Less

Guards of Brexit? Revisiting the cultural significance of the white cliffs of Dover

Melanie Küng

in The road to Brexit: A cultural perspective on British attitudes to Europe

In the build-up to the EU referendum in 2016, the white cliffs of Dover loomed large over a debate crucially driven by concerns over immigration. This chapter discusses the problematic legacy of the ... More

In the build-up to the EU referendum in 2016, the white cliffs of Dover loomed large over a debate crucially driven by concerns over immigration. This chapter discusses the problematic legacy of the cliffs as a key symbol of British insular exceptionalism and (racially) exclusive identities, with a focus on how travel accounts have both constructed and challenged the powerful symbolism of the white cliffs of the mind. The chapter discusses travel accounts by H.V. Morton, Christopher Isherwood, Jonathan Raban, Caryl Phillips and Jamaica Kincaid. Looking beyond the cliffs towards the English Channel as a space of cultural contact and exchange, this chapter argues for a broader and more inclusive perception of Britain’s national border.Less

Geography and the Shaping of Early Colonial Cuba

Luis Martínez-Fernández

in Key to the New World: A History of Early Colonial Cuba

This chapter offers a synthetic view of Cuba’s geography, including aspects such as location, insularity, topography, hydrography, climate, soils, sea and wind currents, natural disasters such as ... More

This chapter offers a synthetic view of Cuba’s geography, including aspects such as location, insularity, topography, hydrography, climate, soils, sea and wind currents, natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes, and natural resources. It also offers an overview of the Cuban archipelago’s geological evolution over millions of years. While this chapter does not subscribe to geographic determinism, it explores the ways in which Cuba’s geographic features have shaped its historical trajectory and the culture of its people. Geographical factors such as sea currents made Cuba a strategic location for a trade and military post, and its climatological, topographic, hydrographic, and soil conditions made the island an ideal location for sugar production.Less

Coda: ‘You, who cross the Channel’: Virginia Woolf, Departures and the Spectro-Aesthetics of Modernism

Patrizia A. Muscogiuri

Claire Davison, Derek Ryan, and Jane Goldman (eds)

in Cross-Channel Modernisms

In Woolf’s writings, the sea and the marginal space of the coast unexpectedly bring about the apparition of material aspects of history – gunfire, warships, the war departed – remarkably prefiguring ... More

In Woolf’s writings, the sea and the marginal space of the coast unexpectedly bring about the apparition of material aspects of history – gunfire, warships, the war departed – remarkably prefiguring the Derridean notion of the spectre as political dead. From aural haunting to vision, a Derridean spectro-aesthetics arises here in the context of a cross-Channel modernism troubled by the carnage and futility of war. Touching on Jacob’s Room (1922), Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), in constellation with works by Wilfred Owen, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, Mulk J. Anand, C.R.W. Nevinson, among others, this chapter draws on three cross-Channel essays by Woolf: ‘Heard on the Downs: The Genesis of Myth’ (1916), ‘The Royal Academy’ (1919), ‘To Spain’ (1923). It recontextualises Woolf’s wartime/post-war writings about the Great War, Channel-crossing, sound, hearing, bodies, the visual arts. Woolf’s historical-materialist treatment of the sea merges history with vision in ways departing from, and subverting, the visual rhetoric prescribed by the British War Propaganda Bureau to official war artists. The Channel was used as political barrier during WWI, facilitating state suppression of information whilst pacifist voices were silenced. Woolf’s strategic liminal stance is informed, instead, by a cross-Channel perspective that is historical, political, aesth-ethical.Less