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Zusatztext Compels us to think carefully of the rhetorical and legal legerdemain of imperial conquest and the centrality of language in the making of the United States as a hegemonic power. Informationen zum Autor Mark Rifkin is an Assistant Professor in the English Department of University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His research focuses on U.S. imperial and racial formations, particularly in the nineteenth century. Previously, he has taught at Skidmore College, University of Chicago, Fordham University, and the University of Pennsylvania, and his articles have appeared in American Quarterly, American Literature, American Indian Quarterly, boundary2, GLQ, differences, Arizona Quarterly, and Cultural Critique. Klappentext In Manifesting America, Mark Rifkin explores how writings by Native Americans and former Mexicans challenge the legal narratives that normalize their absorption into U.S. national space. Demonstrating how the creation and extension of U.S. jurisdiction in the antebellum period functions as an imperial system, the book focuses on Indian removal in the southeast and western Great Lakes regions as well as the annexation of Texas and California. It tracks theconfrontation between U.S. law and the self-representations of once-alien peoples subjected to it, showing how U.S. institutions legitimize conquest as consensual by creating forms of official recognition for dominated groups that reinforce the obviousness of U.S. mappings. However, these mappings remainhaunted and disturbed by the persistence of the political geographies of indigenous and Mexican peoples made domestic in the process of national expansion. Examining a variety of nonfictional writings (including memorials, autobiographies, and histories) produced by imperially displaced populations, Rifkin illustrates how these texts contest the terms and dynamics of U.S. policy, indexing specific forms of collectivity and placemaking disavowed in official accounts. Zusammenfassung In Manifesting America, Mark Rifkin explores how writings by Native Americans and former Mexicans challenge the legal narratives that normalize their absorption into U.S. national space. Demonstrating how the creation and extension of U.S. jurisdiction in the antebellum period functions as an imperial system, the book focuses on Indian removal in the southeast and western Great Lakes regions as well as the annexation of Texas and California. It tracks theconfrontation between U.S. law and the self-representations of once-alien peoples subjected to it, showing how U.S. institutions legitimize conquest as consensual by creating forms of official recognition for dominated groups that reinforce the obviousness of U.S. mappings. However, these mappings remainhaunted and disturbed by the persistence of the political geographies of indigenous and Mexican peoples made domestic in the process of national expansion. Examining a variety of nonfictional writings (including memorials, autobiographies, and histories) produced by imperially displaced populations, Rifkin illustrates how these texts contest the terms and dynamics of U.S. policy, indexing specific forms of collectivity and placemaking disavowed in official accounts....