“IT SPEAKS BY ITSELF THROUGH ME:”THE SYMBOLIC EXCHANGE BETWEEN “AMERICA” AND AMERICAN STUDIES
“IT SPEAKS BY ITSELF THROUGH ME:” THE SYMBOLIC EXCHANGE BETWEEN “AMERICA” AND AMERICAN STUDIES

Summary/Abstract: This paper proposes a reading of America as a postmodern text which cannot be subjected to homogenization and unifying representational practices. Therefore, its polyphonic, multivalent textuality can be addressed only within the bounds of a highly flexible and comprehensive critical framework structured around an inclusive both/and methodological nucleus. Such a mode of theoretical inquiry is provided by the American Studies as an academic discipline in a postmodern context. The central thrust of the study is to highlight the fluid nature and polymorphic expression of the American reality which displays the same resistance to being narrated as postmodernity itself, a fact that entails a corresponding adjustment of methodological paradigms which is in consonance with Professor Lipsitz’s contention that “American studies would be served best by a theory that refuses hypostatization into a method.”

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