The American experience has been defined, in part, by the rhetoric of exceptionalism. This book of 11 critical essays explores the notion as it is manifested across a range of contexts, including the presidency, foreign policy, religion, economics, American history, television news and sports. The idea of exceptionalism is explored through the words of its champions and its challengers, past and present. By studying how the principles of American exceptionalism have been used, adapted, challenged, and even rejected, this volume demonstrates the continued importance of exceptionalism to the mythology, sense of place, direction and identity of the United States, within and outside of the realm of politics. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
A powerful dissection of a core American myth. The idea that the United States is unlike every other country in world history is a surprisingly resilient one. Throughout his distinguished career, Ian Tyrrell has been one of the most influential historians of the idea of American exceptionalism, but he has never written a book focused solely on it until now. The notion that American identity might be exceptional emerged, Tyrrell shows, from the belief that the nascent early republic was not simply a postcolonial state but a genuinely new experiment in an imperialist world dominated by Britain. Prior to the Civil War, American exceptionalism fostered declarations of cultural, economic, and spatial independence. As the country grew in population and size, becoming a major player in the global order, its exceptionalist beliefs came more and more into focus—and into question. Over time, a political divide emerged: those who believed that America’s exceptionalism was the basis of its virtue and those who saw America as either a long way from perfect or actually fully unexceptional, and thus subject to universal demands for justice. Tyrrell masterfully articulates the many forces that made American exceptionalism such a divisive and definitional concept. Today, he notes, the demands that people acknowledge America’s exceptionalism have grown ever more strident, even as the material and moral evidence for that exceptionalism—to the extent that there ever was any—has withered away.
American Exceptionalism provides an accessible yet comprehensive historical account of one of the most important concepts underlying modern theories of American cultural identity. Deborah Madsen charts the contribution of exceptionalism to the evolution of the United States as an ideological and geographical entity from 1620 to the present day. She explains how this sense of spiritual and political destiny has shaped American culture and how it has promoted exciting counter arguments from Native American and Chicano perspectives and in the contemporary writings of authors such as Thomas Pynchon and Toni Morrison.
"American exceptionalism" was once a rather obscure and academic concept, but in the 2012 presidential election campaign the phrase attained unprecedented significance in political rhetoric. President Obama’s conservative critics—most notably Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney—accused the president of disbelieving in American exceptionalism and thereby offending the nation’s civil religion. This creed traditionally has included the notion that America is a political "new Israel" called by God and guided by His Providence to be the exemplar, vanguard, and champion of liberal democracy and the free market for all humanity. The newly politicized narrative of exceptionalism portrayed Obama as a president embarrassed by his own country and intent on remaking the United States in the image of the secularist and socialist countries of Europe. This book takes a step back from the partisan rhetorical bluster and examines afresh the historical and analytical meanings of American exceptionalism, and the extent to which religion—both "real" religion and the more ambiguous "civil" religion—has shaped these meanings and their uses/abuses. This book was published as a special issue of The Review of Faith and International Affairs.
This honors thesis aimed to look at the changeability of American Exceptionalism over time by examining presidential rhetoric in in State of the Union Addresses from 1965 to 2016. This thesis asked the questions, does American Exceptionalism rhetoric decrease during times of failed military intervention, do Republican presidents use more American Exceptionalism rhetoric than Democratic presidents, and is presidential rhetoric of American Exceptionalism increase during times of war compared to times of peace. State of the Union Addresses were coded by groups (i.e. times of failed military intervention and times in the absence of failed military intervention, for the first research question.) and group means were compared using independent samples t-tests. For the qualitative analysis the Constant Comparative method was used to code the statements into three categories: uniqueness, superiority (social identity theory), and miscellaneous. This research found that Republican presidents use American Exceptionalism rhetoric more often than Democratic presidents and that intensity of American Exceptionalism increases over time (from 1965-2016). Further research is needed to develop more coherent conclusions on the finding of a detected increase in intensity over time
Is the US really exceptional in terms of its willingness to take universal human rights seriously? According to the rhetoric of American political leaders, the United States has a unique and lasting commitment to human rights principles and to a liberal world order centered on rule of law and human dignity. But when push comes to shove—most recently in Libya and Syria--the United States failed to stop atrocities and dithered as disorder spread in both places. This book takes on the myths surrounding US foreign policy and the future of world order. Weighing impulses toward parochial nationalism against the ideal of cosmopolitan internationalism, the authors posit that what may be emerging is a new brand of American globalism, or a foreign policy that gives primacy to national self-interest but does so with considerable interest in and genuine attention to universal human rights and a willingness to suffer and pay for those outside its borders—at least on occasion. The occasions of exception—such as Libya and Syria—provide case studies for critical analysis and allow the authors to look to emerging dominant powers, especially China, for indicators of new challenges to the commitment to universal human rights and humanitarian affairs in the context of the ongoing clash between liberalism and realism. The book is guided by four central questions: 1) What is the relationship between cosmopolitan international standards and narrow national self-interest in US policy on human rights and humanitarian affairs? 2) What is the role of American public opinion and does it play any significant role in shaping US policy in this dialectical clash? 3) Beyond public opinion, what other factors account for the shifting interplay of liberal and realist inclinations in Washington policy making? 4) In the 21st century and as global power shifts, what are the current views and policies of other countries when it comes to the application of human rights and humanitarian affairs?
American Exceptionalism and the Legacy of Vietnam examines the influence of the belief in American exceptionalism on the history of U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War. Trevor B. McCrisken analyzes attempts by each post-Vietnam U.S. administration to revive the popular belief in exceptionalism both rhetorically and by pursuing foreign policy supposedly grounded in traditional American principles. He argues that exceptionalism consistently provided the framework for foreign policy discourse but that the conduct of foreign affairs was limited by the Vietnam syndrome.
American exceptionalism--i.e., the belief that the United States is chosen, superior to other nations, and tasked with a unique responsibility or mission--is often analyzed, studied, and critiqued as a singular and unified rhetorical tradition. In this dissertation, though, I argue that the American exceptionalist tradition is in fact conveyed through multiple and distinct rhetorical modes. More specifically, I distinguish between two types of American exceptionalism: accomplished exceptionalism, which is self-celebratory, complacent, and un-critical, and aspirational exceptionalism, which is self-critical, forward-looking, and ameliorative. Because most citizens, politicians, and thinkers understand and deploy exceptionalism in the accomplished sense, this dissertation focuses primarily on the form, substance, and effects of the lesser-known aspirational mode. The dissertation analyzes the political thought of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James Baldwin--three figures who are not normally considered to be part of the American exceptionalist tradition. Through close readings of their speeches and writings, I show that each thinker articulates a philosophy and politics of aspirational exceptionalism. I also highlight the distinct aspirational citizenship practices that each thinker encourages and enables. In so doing, I challenge the widespread assumption that thinkers who criticize or condemn the American polity are, ipso facto, ineligible for exceptionalist status. Put differently, I show that America's radicals, critics, and apologists can (and do) speak in exceptionalist registers and may perhaps be exceptionalism's most sophisticated defenders. More broadly, though, I challenge and re-define what it means to be a "good" American citizen. If, as Charles Taylor argues, language shapes and influences individuals' orientation toward the world, then America's tendency to privilege accomplished exceptionalism while excluding aspirational exceptionalism threatens to create and shore up a society in which the accomplished mode's backward-looking, self-celebratory, and uncritical disposition is seen as the most correct and laudable way to enact citizenship. By identifying another form of exceptionalism (namely, aspirational exceptionalism) and re-claiming its title as such, I shed light on--and, by extension, activate--a different mode of American citizenship: one that is critical and reflective but equally (or perhaps more) commendable.
The idea of America's special place in history has been a guiding light for centuries. With thoughtful insight, John D. Wilsey traces the concept of exceptionalism, including its theological meaning and implications for civil religion. This careful history considers not only the abuses of the idea but how it can also point to constructive civil engagement and human flourishing.
An incisive and wide ranging look at a powerful force and myth in American culture and history, American Exceptionalisms reveals the centuries-old persistence of the notion that the United States is an exceptional nation, in being both an example to the world and exempt from the rules of international law. Scholars from North America and Europe trace versions of the rhetoric of exceptionalism through a multitude of historical, cultural, and political phenomena, from John Winthrop's vision of the "cittie on a hill" and the Salem witch trials in the seventeenth century to The Blair Witch Project and Oprah Winfrey's "Child Predator Watch List" in the twenty-first century. The first set of essays focus on constitutive historical moments in the development of the myth, rom early exploration narratives through political debates in the early republic to twentieth-century immigration debates. The latter essays address the role of exceptionalism in the "war on terror" and such cornerstones of modern popular culture such as the horror stories of H.P. Lovecraft, the songs of Steve Earle, and the Oprah Winfrey show. Sylvia Söderlind is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of Margin/Alias: Language and Colonization in Canadian and Québécois Fiction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) and articles on American, Canadian and Québécois fiction, "ghostmodernism" and translation, and the politics of metaphor published in, among others, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Ariel, Essays in Canadian Writing, Voix et images, RS/SI, New Feminism Review (Japan), ARTES (Sweden). James Taylor Carson is Professor of History and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His scholarship focuses on the ethnohistory of native peoples in the American South, and he has published two books on the subject, Searching for the Bright Path: The Mississippi Choctaws from Prehistory to Removal (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999) and Making an Atlantic World: Circles, Paths, and Stories from the Colonial South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007).
