I Am Resisting Narrative Here”
The Vietnam War, Postmodernism, and the Ends of American Power in Joan Didion's Democracy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8895124 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stephen Carter (0000-0002-4670-0884, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 415-437 |
| Publication date | 2018-06-27 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Review of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-7720 • E-ISSN: 1710-114X |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/cras.2018.006 |
| OpenAlex | W2810097641 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 38 |
Set in spring 1975 during the final months of the US war in Southeast Asia, Joan Didion's novel Democracy (1984) incorporates and dismantles four narrative tropes undergirding the projection of American power during the Cold War: first, the so-called Puritan errand into the wilderness, made central by scholars such as Perry Miller in the 1950s; second, the frontier, revitalized by Kennedy's 1960 New Frontier campaign; third, the United States as enlightenment nation, a metaphor of illumination set in cruel relief by its use of atomic weapons; and, finally, the image of the American republic, a self-conception thrown into crisis by the Cold War's apparatuses of state secrecy and surveillance. Drawing these tropes into her own disintegrating narrative, Didion demonstrates that the US war in Vietnam marks the bankruptcy of these self-images, a critique of grand national narratives that, in turn, comprehends the war as essential to registering the emergence of postmodernism
Art · Literature · Narrative · Postmodernism · Power (physics · American Political and Social Dynamics · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis
By the bomb's early light
Shoal of time
Gunfighter nation
Errand into the wilderness
The Global Cold War
A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms
Cultures of United States imperialism
Colonial Amnesia
The Militarizing of Hawai‘i
Asian Settler Colonialism
Nothing Ever Dies
Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680
Cultures of United States Imperialism (review)
Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Asian American critique and Moana Nui 2011
New Americanists
A Conversation with William V. Spanos
The Perfect War
Basing the Pacific
State of War
Republicanism
The Postmodern Condition
The Insurrection of Subjugated Futures
No Walk in the Park
Militarization and Resistance from Guåhan
Aloha, Vietnam
Introduction
Periodizing the 60s
Global Local
From a Native Daughter
From a Native Daughter
The American Jeremiad
The Machiavellian Moment
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |