America's World Identity The Politics of Exclusion

America's presence is worldwide. But what is America? This book offers a new perspective. It argues that America's national identity is constructed rather than essential and reflects a politics of exclusion on the basis of race, gender, wealth and sexuality. This exclusion has been globalized through America's economic, cultural, political and military expansion. The study provocatively draws upon poetry, literature, art, architecture, gangsta rap, landscape and cityscape to illuminate the construction of America's national identity and to illustrate how this has been globalized in a world increasingly marked by questions of culture. The book examines the idea of political identity, explores the vernacular and 'official' stories of the idea of 'America' and traces the globalization of this national identity. Unusually, the book uses metaphors of American superheroes, of America's 'dreamlife' of signs and images and of hyper-real impulses to expose America's world image, and underlying practices of identificatory exclusion.