Yesterday was the publication date for an edited volume I have an essay in: Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past. Now, since I am historian of early modern France, most of the edited volumes I have contributed to have sales figures in the low three figures (also sometimes price tags in the low three figures—could there be a connection?) and are lucky to get reviewed anywhere other than the reliable and wonderful
I'm reminded of Boorstin's The Americans: The Colonial Experience, which I read back in the mid-'80s. In order to establish his version of American exceptionalism, he created a ludicrous version of the European rule, to use your phraseology, from which Americans had deviated. It led to shallow analysis on all fronts.
Good summary. I learned a lot already. Wouldn’t it be fair to say that while the concept of exceptionalism is problematic it has generated a great deal of creative inquiry, including Tocqueville, Emerson, Whitman, as well as some of the scholars you mention, who are not slouches. There’s nothing contradictory either about different countries claiming to be exceptional in different ways, is there? Esp with Marxist universalism in the background if academic life, exceptionalism may well be the most useful of basic frameworks? Do you treat exceptionalism as entirely wrong or just focus on crude political usages of it like Gingrich? We should review this book in Society.
Hi Dan. Interesting points. But in the end I don't see "exceptionalism" as very useful. There's a difference between "exception" and "difference." Difference is at the heart of any serious social analysis, but exception implies a general rule which I think, in practice, is impossible to establish -- as I say in the essay, there's a reason that Marxists are so fond of the term, but I'm no Marxist, at least not in this regard. Yes, the literary invocation of America's special role for Whitman and Emerson is beautiful and compelling, but that's not the same thing. As for Tocqueville, it's interesting. When he calls Americans "exceptional," using the word, in Part II of Democracy, it's not in reference to equality. He says they're exceptionally materialistic, which seems more of a crude French stereotype than anything else. The larger point of the book, of course, is that Americans are _not_ exceptional, but rather a vanguard nation of sorts. You should definitely review the book in Society!
I'm reminded of Boorstin's The Americans: The Colonial Experience, which I read back in the mid-'80s. In order to establish his version of American exceptionalism, he created a ludicrous version of the European rule, to use your phraseology, from which Americans had deviated. It led to shallow analysis on all fronts.
Good summary. I learned a lot already. Wouldn’t it be fair to say that while the concept of exceptionalism is problematic it has generated a great deal of creative inquiry, including Tocqueville, Emerson, Whitman, as well as some of the scholars you mention, who are not slouches. There’s nothing contradictory either about different countries claiming to be exceptional in different ways, is there? Esp with Marxist universalism in the background if academic life, exceptionalism may well be the most useful of basic frameworks? Do you treat exceptionalism as entirely wrong or just focus on crude political usages of it like Gingrich? We should review this book in Society.
Hi Dan. Interesting points. But in the end I don't see "exceptionalism" as very useful. There's a difference between "exception" and "difference." Difference is at the heart of any serious social analysis, but exception implies a general rule which I think, in practice, is impossible to establish -- as I say in the essay, there's a reason that Marxists are so fond of the term, but I'm no Marxist, at least not in this regard. Yes, the literary invocation of America's special role for Whitman and Emerson is beautiful and compelling, but that's not the same thing. As for Tocqueville, it's interesting. When he calls Americans "exceptional," using the word, in Part II of Democracy, it's not in reference to equality. He says they're exceptionally materialistic, which seems more of a crude French stereotype than anything else. The larger point of the book, of course, is that Americans are _not_ exceptional, but rather a vanguard nation of sorts. You should definitely review the book in Society!