Critical Theory

Thinking Through Nationalism

Unpacking the Nation through American Studies

By the editors | 0 comments |

One of the serious boundaries and dilemmas for a journal that wishes to reach an international audience is the matter of language. Working from Canada, most of NeoAm’s executive have grownup or been well-exposed to a bilingual environment and immersed in the “language” of multiculturalism. But, this is not to say that Canadians, like our American counterparts to the south and in nations around the world, are not actively engaged in discussions about “accommodation” or “compromise over the cultural makeup of the nation-state”. Recently we decided that the journal would attempt to launch a series of posters and advertisements in multiple languages, despite the organization’s (current) inability to actually accept papers in the posted languages. In other words, the posters would be used for the exclusive purpose of increasing general awareness among a wider global audience, as NeoAm would not be able to alter its practice of requesting written works in English only. This decision to launch the posters has produced a fair amount of debate, even amongst our small executive. Some have argued that the journal would be misrepresented by advertisements in languages other than English, while others argue that so much of the work done in American Studies assumes a monolingual readership. Needless to say, this debate may never be solved—certainly not within the scope of our small publication—but it points to the crucial and problematic role that language plays in the constitution of identity, subjectivization and the cultural apparatuses that sustain any collective identity.

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From the Editors - Spring/Summer 2009

By the editors | 0 comments |

After months of preparation, NeoAmericanist is pleased to release Volume 4 no. 2 in our newly redesigned and much improved format. To build on our mission of making the journal an interactive and accessible environment, we have moved to a web 2.0 system, which allows for extensive feedback, discussion, better archiving and a host of other features... 

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Sexing the Terrorist:

Tracing the National Body at Abu Ghraib

By Cait Keegan | 0 comments |

For the vast majority, the specter of the racialized and homophobic violence documented at Abu Ghraib was an inexplicably unsettling sight. In this article Cait Keegan attempts to explain this discomfort by examining what these abuses and the public perception of them implied and revealed about the desire for an impermeable and purified American national body. Keegan reads the creation and implementation of the figure of the terrorist as a signifier for national incoherence and as a tool for the symbolic control and oppression of other socially undesirable groups, particularly queer people. The homosexual humiliation at Abu Ghraib, employing the terrorist body as a floating signifier, is interpreted to signal a new level of innovation in the use of homophobic terror as a technology of nationalistic militarization and expanding empire. Ultimately, Keegan argues that popular interpretations of Abu Ghraib disclose American society’s inability to recognize and defuse its own heterosexist practices.

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“The Fragile Web”:

The Reconstruction of the Past in A Midwife’s Tale

By Holly Kent | 0 comments |

By Investigating various cinematic and authorial techniques, this article strives to discover the problematic issue of reconstructing an otherwise fluid past. Because the past is disjointed, subjective, and often goes ‘officially’ unwritten, both the necessity for imaginative (re)construction as well as extensive academic historical research are aligned to show the tensions between a ‘true’ and a ‘factual’ historical representation. Moreover, tensions created the structure of A Midwifes Tale and shifting means of representation are examined in an effort to expose the mandate behind the film’s portrayal. Kent also further emphasizes the difficulties of constructing the narrative of the oppressed (female) subject, and argues that A Midwife’s Tale exhibits an uneasy tension between the filmmakers’ desire to represent the disjointed, subjective process by which history is created, and to produce a powerfully appealing, seemingly authentic visual reconstruction of the past.

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