Elsewhere in America: The Crisis of Belonging in Contemporary Culture

274 Pages·2016·2.38 MB·English

by  David Trend

This is a terrific book—smart, provocative, engaging, and clearly written. It offers a memorable set of readings for students and
scholars alike. Each chapter is a gem of organization, integration, and argument. Trend’s essays lead the reader through a maze
of countervailing theories and positions leaving them with a much stron-ger sense of the complexity of our present time. Trend’s
book is less about critique (though the critique is powerful) and more about a kind of hope that is restrained yet feasible.
Richard A. Quantz, Professor, Miami University
Trend is a lucid writer able to unmask the internal contractions of the neoliberal order with theoretical and conceptual clarity, as
he writes with urgency to make sense of a fractured America in a changing world economy.
Rodolfo D. Torres, Professor, University of California, Irvine, and
former Adam Smith Fellow, University of Glasgow
Elsewhere in America offers a prescient, non-dialectical approach to alterity, deftly revealing the hidden paradoxes inherent to
so-called positions of “center” and “margin” within current media-driven polemics. Skirting binary logic, Trend offers a series of
daring new formulations for hybrid positionalities—neither uto-pian nor dystopian—that afford theory to be transposed
effectively into practice. Elsewhere in America will sit on my bookshelf along side Chantal Mouffe and Henry A. Giroux as an
invaluable go-to source for artists and writers rethinking democracy in this age of political extremism.
Juli Carson, Professor, Univesity of California, Irvine
Elsewhere in America
Americans think of their country as a welcoming place where everyone has equal opportunity.
Yet historical baggage and anxious times can restrain these possibilities. Newcomers often find
that civic belonging comes with strings attached––riddled with limitations or legally punitive
rites of passage. For those already here, new challenges to civic belonging emerge on the basis
of belief, behavior, or heritage. This book uses the term “elsewhere” in describing conditions
that exile so many citizens to “some other place” through prejudice, competition, or discordant
belief. Yet in another way, “elsewhere” evokes an undefined “not yet” ripe with potential. In
the face of America’s daunting challenges, can “elsewhere” point to optimism, hope, and
common purpose?
Through 12 detailed chapters, the book applies critical theory in the humanities and social
sciences to examine recurring crises of social inclusion in the U.S. After two centuries of
incremental “progress” in securing human dignity, today the U.S. finds itself torn by new
conflicts over reproductive rights, immigration, health care, religious extremism, sexual
orientation, mental illness, and fear of terrorists. Is there a way of explaining this recurring
tendency of Americans to turn against each other? Elsewhere in America engages these
questions, charting the ever-changing faces of dif-ference (manifest in contested landscapes of
sex and race to such areas as disability and mental health), their spectral and intersectional
character (recent discourses on performativity, normativity, and queer theory), and the grounds
on which categories are manifest in ideation and movement politics (metapolitics,
cosmopolitanism, dismodernism).
David Trend is Chair of the Department of Art at the University of California, Irvine. He holds
a PhD in Curriculum Theory and an MFA in Visual Studies. His books include Worlding:
Identity, Media, and Imagination in a Digital Age (2013), The End of Reading (2010), A
Culture Divided (2009), Everyday Culture (2008), and The Myth of Media Violence (2007),
among others. Honored as a Getty Scholar, Trend is the author of over 200 essays and a former
editor of the journals Afterimage and Socialist Review. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
CRITICAL INTERVENTIONS
Politics, Culture, and the Promise of Democracy
Edited by Henry A. Giroux, Susan Searls Giroux, and Kenneth J. Saltman
Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability
By Henry A. Giroux (2011)
Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future
By Henry A. Giroux (2012)
The Failure of Corporate School Reform
By Kenneth J. Saltman (2012)
Toward a New Common School Movement
By Noah De Lissovoy, Alexander J. Means, and Kenneth J. Saltman (2015)
The Great Inequality
By Michael D. Yates (2016)
Elsewhere in America: The Crisis of Belonging in Contemporary Culture
By David Trend (2016)
ELSEWHERE IN AMERICA
The Crisis of Belonging in Contemporary Culture
David Trend
First published 2016
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of David Trend to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Trend, David.
Title: Elsewhere in America : the crisis of belonging in contemporary culture / David Trend.
Description: New York : Routledge- Taylor & Francis, 2016. | Series: Critical interventions
Identifiers: LCCN 2015042876| ISBN 9781138654433 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138654440 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315623245 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: United States–Social conditions–1980- | Politics and culture–United States. | Neoliberalism–United States.
Classification: LCC HN65 .T73 1997 | DDC 306.0973–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042876
ISBN: 978-1-138-65443-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-65444-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62324-5 (ebk)
Contents
Belonging Where? Introduction
PART I
Belonging There: People like Us
1 Makers-and-Takers: When More Is Not Enough
2 True Believers: Spiritual Life in a Secular Age
3 Ordinary People: The Normal and the Pathological
4 Homeland Insecurities: Expecting the Worst
PART II
Belonging Somewhere: Blurred Boundaries
5 Reality Is Broken: Neoliberalism and the Virtual Economy
6 Mistaken Identities: From Color Blindness to Gender Bending
7 No Body Is Perfect: Disability in a Posthuman Age
8 On the Spectrum: America’s Mental Health Disorder
PART III
Belonging Elsewhere: The Subject of Utopia
9 Gaming the System: Competition and Its Discontents
10 To Affinity and Beyond: The Cyborg and the Cosmopolitan
11 Medicating the Problem: America’s New Pharmakon
12 The One and the Many: The Ethics of Uncertainty
Index
Belonging Where?
Introduction
Speaking at the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches, President Barack
Obama described America as an incomplete project––a nation caught between ideals of a
perfect union and the lingering realities of their failure. While citing advances in civil liberties
since the bloody apex of the Voting Rights Movement, Obama also spoke of a federal report
issued just days earlier documenting structural racism and misbehavior toward African
Americans by police in Ferguson, MO, where some months previously law enforcement
officers had killed an unarmed black teenager.1 “We know the march is not yet over. We know
the race is not yet won,” the President stated, adding, “We know that reaching that blessed
destination requires admitting as much, facing up to the truth.”2
Elsewhere in America: The Crisis of Belonging in Contemporary Culture describes the
nation’s ongoing pursuit of that blessed destination. Like many utopian quests, this search says
as much about current problems as it does about future aspirations. This book uses the term
“elsewhere” to discuss these two Americas. In the first sense, elsewhere references existing
conditions that exile so many citizens to “some other place” through prejudice, competition, or
discordant belief. Even as “diversity” has become the official norm in American society, the
country continues to fragment along new lines that pit citizens against their government, each
other, and even themselves. Yet in another way, elsewhere evokes an undefined “not yet” that is
ripe with potential. While the journey may be difficult, elsewhere can point to optimism, hope,
and common purpose. It was in this latter spirit that Obama spoke of a nation eternally
venturing into unfamiliar ground. “America is a constant work in progress,” he said. “We were
born of change.”3
Obama’s expansive rhetoric was hardly innocent in its appeal to “American” values.
Modern nations define themselves through mythic ideals as much as through land or
populations. Philosophically speaking, the problem with ideals lies in the very abstraction that
gives them broad appeal. In a heterogeneous society like the U.S., familiar terms like
“freedom” and “equality” are understood in radically different ways from region to region, and
from group to group. America always has struggled with such contests of meaning, as grand
ideals of unity and inclusion nearly always forget someone. Behind the country’s mythic open
door, newcomers often find that civic belonging comes with strings attached––riddled with
conditions, limitations, and in some instances, punitive rites of passage. And for those already
here, new rationales emerge to challenge civic belonging on the basis of belief, behavior, or
heritage––as the idealized blessed destination is endlessly deferred.
Before the Beginning
In its original Latin, the word Americus described a kind of “elsewhere”—in denoting a
Mundus Novus (New World). This idea soon assumed a magical meaning for explorers,
synonymous with unknown territory and boundless possibilities–ideas that fit perfectly into a
European view of the known world as something to be examined and cultivated. The very
newness of the Americas seemed to offer unimagined potential, but its strange qualities also
made settlers anxious. The unknown can have this effect, as the unfamiliar leaves one open to
anticipation, speculation, and irrationality. Wonder can easily turn to fear, especially when it is
undergirded by material need, habits of power, and religious rivalries. As Elsewhere in
America explores this conflicted mindset, the larger question of the book concerns the way in
which people fashion worlds relationally, and the difficulty of such “worlding” amid the push
and pull of inherited oppositions. It looks at the way belonging locates between known and
unknown, between recognized and invisible, between the friend and stranger in everyone—and
in no one. Elsewhere in America is about finding ways through these perplexing paradoxes.
Contradictions were built into America from the start—most notably the tension between
individual and community. And since the nation’s founding, certain unresolved conflicts have
animated debates in nearly every sector of society. Enlightenment ideals of autonomous agency
invested “choice” and volition in American citizenship and national identity. It was thought that
reason would modulate the marriage of democracy and capitalism in the new land, even in the
face of cultural difference. But the colonists also brought with them histories of
intergenerational rivalry, conflict, and trauma––which they soon began to replicate consciously
or unconsciously. Hence the American self found itself burdened with epistemological
baggage––manifest in the terms of subjectivity so often posed as familiar oppositions:
one/many, inside/outside, them/us, etc.
It’s no secret how this history unfolded––and that throughout its existence the United States
has shown a strange tendency to turn against itself, dividing citizens against each other with a
vehemence rivaling the most brutal regimes on earth. Some have rationalized the resulting
crisis of “belonging” in America as an understandable consequence of cultural diversity,
economic stress, and global threat. After all, haven’t there always been “insiders” and
“outsiders” in every culture? Aren’t competition and aggression wired into human nature? Or
is there something peculiar about the personality of the U.S.? Could it be that prejudice is the
real legacy of the “American exceptionalism,” in traditions dating to the genocide of
indigenous populations, the subjugation of women, the rise of slavery, the scapegoating of
immigrants, and the more recent assaults on the poor or anyone falling outside the realm of
normalcy?
I discussed selected aspects of America’s divisive pathology in my book A Culture
Divided: America’s Struggle for Unity, which was written in the closing years of the George
W. Bush presidency.4 Like many at the time, I had completely given up on the idea of “common
ground” amid the residue of post-9/11 reactionary fervor and emerging economic recession.
Media commentators were buzzing constantly about red/blue state polarization.5 Opinions
varied about the cause of the divide, attributing it to factors including regionalism, media
sensationalism, partisan antipathy, or all of these combined. Also joining the fray were those
asserting that the divide was fabricated, with evenly divided elections showing most people in
the middle of the curve on most issues. My somewhat contrarian view was that the “problem”
shouldn’t be regarded as a problem at all. After all, America always had been divided––
through war and peace, boom and bust. Division was the country’s national brand. But as a
book about politics, A Culture Divided didn’t get to the roots or the lived experience of
America’s compulsive divisiveness.6
Elsewhere in America brings new specificity and depth to this issue, especially as cultural
fragmentation finds fresh and unexpected form in a neoliberal landscape. While recognizing the
benefits of nationalist belonging, Elsewhere in America charts the ever-changing faces of
difference (manifest in topics ranging from sex and race to such areas as disability and mental
health), their spectral and intersectional character (as seen in the new discourses on anti-
normativity and cosmopolitanism), and the grounds on which categories are manifest in
ideation and actions (seen in theories of performativity, post-identity, queer and dismodern
theory). Through this range of conceptual approaches, Elsewhere in America attempts to
mitigate the solipsism and appropriating tendencies of singular discourses or schools of
thought––while also recognizing that complete escape is neither possible nor advisable.
Mapping Elsewhere
Elsewhere in America is arranged in three sections, each with a different conceptual
orientation. Discussion mixes theory with concrete detail in exploring themes of opposition,
fragmentation, and dissolution. A certain degree of historical counterpoint also informs
discussion of the nation’s continuing struggle to understand its ever-changing present moment.
Part I (“Belonging There”) describes historically grounded attitudes of certainty and apparent
clarity in defining conventional American values and identities, even as these embody certain
contradictions (such as the tension between individual and community). Part II (“Blurred
Boundaries”) looks at ways that such certainties have come unraveled as the diversity and
multiplicities of American society have become more complex and contested (identity and
“post” movements). Part III (“Belonging Elsewhere”) then explores ways of moving forward
through syntheses, new models of subjectivity (hybridities and singular-pluralities, for
example), or yet-unknown possibilities.
Part I: “Belonging There: People like Us” looks at frequently contentious efforts to define
(or redefine) America through the lenses of commerce, belief, conformity, and national
security––recognizing the linkages of democratic capitalism with the enlightenment humanism
of the founding era. The opening chapter, “Makers-and-Takers: When More Is Not Enough,”
examines the role of individualism and private property in notions of belonging, linking these
to principles of the voluntary association and objective possession so central to American
ideology, as well as the resulting exclusion, inequity, and paranoia they continue to generate.
The following chapter, “True Believers: Spiritual Life in a Secular Age,” extends this
discussion with an examination of religion in the U.S., especially the remarkable dominance of
Protestantism and its recurrent themes of persecution, redemption, and competitive
proselytizing. Next, “Ordinary People: The Normal and the Pathological” looks at ideals of
health and scientific rationalism, as well as practices of population management, which
underlie utopian impulses to standardize bodies and behaviors of many kinds, but often betray
long-standing power asymmetries in the process. Issues of power also inform the final chapter
in this section, “Homeland Insecurities: Expecting the Worst,” discussing perennial American