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"Empire Burlesque" provides a unique perspective on how much the globalism that, properly, should be 'post-American' is actually another (re)production of America. It is impressive work."--Patrick O'Donnell, author of "Latent Destinies: Cultural Paranoia and Contemporary U.S. Narrative"
List of contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: We Welcoming Others, or What's Wrong with the Global Point of View? 1
I. Reading as a Vanishing Act
1. Edward W. Said and the Fate of Critical Culture 29
2. Why Foucault No Longer Matters 43
3. Lentricchia's Frankness and the Place of Literature 62
II. Globalizing Literary Studies
4. Redesigning the Lessons of Literature 95
5. The Return to Ethics and the Specter of Reading 114
6. Class in a Global Light: The Two Professions 136
III. Analyzing Global America
7. Transference and Abjection: An Analytic Parable 163
8. Ghostwork: An Uncanny Prospect for New Americanists 183
9. Specter of Theory: The Bad Conscience of American Criticism 220
IV. Reading Worlds
10. Empire Baroque: Becoming Other in Henry James 237
11. Planet Buyer and the Catmaster: A Critical Future for Transference 301
Notes 339
Bibliography 357
Index 365
About the author
Daniel T. O Hara
Summary
Traces the emergence of the contemporary global context within which American critical identity is formed. This title argues that globalization has had a markedly negative impact on American cultural criticism, circumscribing both its material and imaginative potential, reducing much of it to absurdity.
