Transnationalism and American Studies: The View from Abroad by Alfred Hornung

Once again, the full texts of Robinson, Rowe and Hornung, including bibliographies, can be accessed here. 

Transnationalism and American Studies: The View from Abroad by Alfred Hornung

The presence of American soldiers in Europe, especially in postwar Germany, marked the beginning of a transatlantic alliance in economics, politics, and culture. The same held true for the American presence in the Pacific and the ensuing bilateral relations between Japan and the United States. Both the transatlantic and the transpacific relations eventually developed into international networks in which the products of American culture play a preeminent role. In the ideological battle of the Cold War, the defeated nations of Germany and Japan, subject to political programs of re-education administered by the American forces, eventually became most receptive to the manifold influences from the former enemy turned ally. Under these auspices concepts of American studies developed; national American studies associations arose and determined the academic engagement with the U.S.A.

. . . Might one retell this same story as in which the losers help the victor's write their history? That's probably facile of me, but the cliches about history being written by the victors floated by as I read this and I couldn't help myself. After all, we are talking here about Germans and Japanese being "subject to political programs of re-education administered by the American forces" and to the extent that these are, substantively, political, it is not that far a leap to read it in such a fashion. It also positions a post-military victory's program of political re-education as the founding of a "transatlantic alliance in economics, politics, and culture." And again, as the text makes clear, it is in the re-educated, politically re-aligned context that "national American studies associations arose and determined the academic engagement with the U.S.A."

Individual initiatives of non-U.S. scholars in the American Studies Association (ASA) resulted, during the 1970s, in bilateral communications and exchange programs. The common concern of Americanists was a critical engagement with the politics of the U.S., especially the Vietnam War and Reaganomics, often guided by the perspective of minority cultures. Two major historical events seem to be responsible for more systematic organizational changes in the cooperation of different national American studies associations. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the alleged “end of history” (Francis Fukuyama) in 1989 positioned the United States in the role of the only superpower, “the indispensable nation” (Bill Clinton). The international alliance in the first Iraq War (Operation Desert Storm, 1991) seems to have called forth efforts to internationalize American studies, channeled first by the ASA, then coordinated independently by the newly founded International American Studies Association (IASA) since 2003. The effects and the political climate after 9/11, as the second major event, called for a multilateral initiative concretized in the concept of Transnational American studies (TAS) as formulated in Shelley Fisher-Fishkin’s Presidential Address in 2004 and supported by a number of national associations from abroad.

. . . No mention of the rise (at least by name), also concurrent with Reagan, of identity-politics. That is surely a smart move rhetorically in this case, though the choice made here of describing the "critical engagement with the politics of the U.S." from "the perspective of minority cultures" risks placing all the politics on one side of this divide, when reflectively, it has to be on both side if there is to be anything political about it. 

The gradual move from individual representations in the ASA to the cooperation of national associations was also a process of mutual learning and exchange in which U.S. American studies scholars were initially felt to represent the state of the art to which non-American scholars from abroad contributed, even if their achievements were not always recognized. The push for an internationalization of American studies from the late 90s on meant to integrate the value of scholarship from abroad in a global academic community. While the founders and members of IASA argued for and promoted American studies as a global enterprise independent of U.S. associations and sponsors, the proponents of the concept of Transnational American studies affirmed the platform of the ASA as a basis of equality and exchange among all Americanists worldwide.

. . . The interesting part of this from my perspective is the final sentence. Precisely why is it that the IASA felt the need for independence from "U.S. associations and sponsors"? There is, after all, a good deal of actual capital involved (via funding from U.S.-based institutions, the Fulbright, etc) and a good bit of what, evoking Bourdieu's thought if departing from it, we might call "academic capital" as, for good or more likely ill, journals in this field based in the U.S. entail more prestige to those who publish in them than those outside the U.S. So, while I do not want to impose a rigid economism on this analysis by any means, it does seem that as universities are businesses, and universities in Germany (and here I speak mostly of what I learned about Uni Mainz) have moved to a funding model that favors (perhaps fetishizes) "collaborative research projects" such that many graduate students obtain funding, if they do, through the auspices of such a collaborative project. This is actually much closer to the model prevalent in US universities in science and technological departments, and in my experience is quite unlike what one find in the humanities generally (which add a tiny note of irony to calling this "Americanization" or understanding it as a normalization of university functioning between Europe and the States). Also in this last sentence, we have counter-posed to the IASA, those who favor the concept of Transnational American Studies, in Hornung's words (and I think, also his belief) affirming the ASA "as a basis of equality and exchange among all Americanists worldwide." Now the phrasing here both counterposes this belief to that of the founders of the IASA, but less overtly is it not a criticism? That is, during the colloquium on this topic, Dr. Hornung raised this issue, and as I wrote on this blog previously, he did not think that the measures taken by the IASA were responding to any real issue. I found that difficult to believe then, and I find it just as difficult to believe now. [This gave me an idea as well, which I've set in motion as best I can, though I can do nothing now but wait and see if it bears fruit]. 

Following the debates about internationalization and globalization, Günter Lenz proposed a “Dialogics of International American Culture Studies,” which transcended earlier border studies and argued for a comparative American studies concept, which from 2003 on served as the title of a new journal, Comparative American Studies, based in Europe and associated with IASA. Berndt Ostendorf, in turn, maintained that “transnationalism presupposes anti-essentialism, favors plurality, mobility, hybridity and favors margins or spaces in-between” (19). The isolated and partially disparate attempts at locating and demarcating the transnational led to more systematic approaches after 9/11. Leaving behind the earlier conflation of the term with the international, the multinational, the global, and the diasporic, Transnational American studies was increasingly recognized as a discipline in academic institutions both in the U.S. and abroad. It built on and expanded regional concepts, such as European American studies or Asian American studies, and transcended these principally dialogical interrelations multilaterally. The underlying common denominator was the direct or indirect presence of aspects of Americanness, embraced, critiqued, or rejected in different parts of the world. Methodologically, Transnational American studies opened up new approaches to correlate local and national to American phenomena in a process of mutual enhancement.

. . . Looking at Ostendorf's quote here, I ask myself, which of these things that transnationalism is said to favor, am I also in favor of? Certainly I aim to be anti-essentialist (as well as anti-foundationalist, though that term didn't make this list). "Plurality" but pluralism? A curious choice of words to my way of thinking. How could one be against plurality, rigid monotheists I suppose? But in a academic frame of this sort, how could plurality every be excluded? Would it not intrude on any study, no matter how small? "Mobility" provokes different questions in me. Perhaps if one is at every moment foregrounding transnationalism then the study of a settled and by no means mobile community is less immediately of interest, but surely the non- or less-mobile is no less deserving of study than the very mobile. Why would one favor mobility in the object of one's study? Might one ask whether the systematic favoring of mobility, hybridity, margins and "spaces-in-between" is not, at least, a fetishism of sorts and depending on the details and how sweepingly accurate this statement is as a description, a sort of essentialism as well? As in, the properly transnational object of study will have these qualities, such that they are the essence of the object that it constructs? Being anti-essentialist is never something one is simply done with, it's rather something we must always be engaged with and alert to ways that essentialism creeps back in. The margins and in-between spaces and the term hybridity also resonate strongly with certain theoretical paradigms and practices which presumable are also things that transnationalism favors or perhaps presupposes. This aspect I would appreciate seeing more clearly articulated as I would be less than thrilled to see postcolonialism as a basic framework for such a field and would prefer to see both a more aggressive theoretical pluralism as well as pockets of more explicitly politically-committed scholarship as well.

To what extent this global partnership of American studies scholars, which opens up new fields of research wherever American influence is manifest, can also be seen as an aspect of U.S. cultural imperialism reflects the ideological divide between practitioners and critics of TAS. Early examples in this dual line of transnational cooperation and cultural imperialism were the foundations of Disneyland theme parks in Japan (Tokyo 1983), Europe (Paris 1992), and the People’s Republic of China (Hong Kong 2005). While they represented cultural and political interventions of the U.S., they also marked stages of transcultural approximations of cultural taste shared transnationally. From this ambivalent position, critics of TAS see it as a new version of American exceptionalism which perpetuates the political, economic, and cultural dominance of the United States in the academy. While this critique is shared by many practitioners of American studies, scholars worldwide also recognize the possibilities of counterbalancing the U.S. American influence by pointing to non-American input and contributions, especially at times of U.S. unilateral actions. Simultaneously, TAS creates a closer cooperation of American scholars with their colleagues abroad, which often leads to a revision of former assumptions of a potentially exceptionalist American stance. For this sake, collaborative conferences have been organized both in Europe and Asia, resulting in important publications on the topic (Fluck et al., Roberts). For European critics, who experienced the formation of a new political union, evident in the new currency of the Euro, the move beyond the boundaries of the nation state, which such concepts as “New American Studies” (Fisher), “post-nationalist American Studies” (Rowe) and their critique of a global capitalism imply, coincided with the practice of TAS. The simultaneous circulation of familiar and newly popularized terms with the prefix “trans,” such as transculturation (Ortiz), translation, transit, translocalities (Appadurai), or transmigration as migrant transnationalism (Vertovec), indicate transformations in the political, economic, and cultural arena marking the 21st century. It is no surprise that at the end of the American century critics envision a world and critical practice in which the national reference to “American” recedes into the background and loses its dominant position. Thus the Indian American journalist Fareed Zakaria prefigures The Post-American World (2008), in which new global players arise in the emergent nations of China and India. Likewise, the study of American literature, which due to transmigrations has become a transnational subject (Giles, Hebel), leads to a new interest in what the German poet Goethe once romantically considered “world literature” (David Damrosch, Wai Chee Dimock, Lawrence Buell). The final stage, which seems to emerge from TAS, is the concept of planetarity—a worldwide academic consideration of the dangers to Planet Earth—determined by an ecological concern and the acceptance of alterity in a mode of conviviality (Spivak, Heise).

. . . Now, Hornung in this short text is not (as Rowe and Robinson had, in their differing ways) stressing quite so much the changed status of the nation-state in this new academic configuration. This emphasis is not absent, just not insisted upon quite so much. So, when he mentions the criticism that TAS "can also be seen as an aspect of U.S. cultural imperialism" it seems that, if this is what these "critics of TAS" feel is at issue, then the U.S. nation state is much more of a (possibly disavowed) master signifier in TAS than Hornung and others let on. How might one assess this question? Initially, one might wish to see the critics named rather than simply alluded to via their criticisms. And I must say, I find the example of various Disneylands in other countries less than revealing in relation to this criticism. I also wonder if, given what so many writers on this topic have to say, whether "american exceptionalism" at least in the contemporary practice of "American Studies" might be something of a false problem. By that I mean, the critics, in Hornung's presentation are concerned about "a new version of American exceptionalism" (my emphasis) whereas in his rejoinder he stresses that greater cooperation "often leads to a revision of former assumptions of a potentially exceptionalist American stance" and here is where it feels to me like the criticism and the response may be speaking passed one another. That is,, do the critics mean simply a perpetuation of american exceptionalism as it is already known? Or, as it seems to me, are they concerned about  a new version, one which might well come cloaked as its very opposite? So then, are these new transnational partnerships which avoid the exceptionalist stance, avoiding the old, already thoroughly criticized one, or are they alert to how it might be a submerged aspect of the very transnationalism they see as its antidote? The text is not clear on this question. 

. . .Of Fisher and Rowe, I am at least gratified that someone is managing to keep alive a "critique of a global capitalism", though I am unclear on how this makes their own academic efforts "coincide" with transnationalism generally (which may simply be that thus far, I have sen no evidence of a critique of capitalism in transnational american studies - which is not to say that it is not there - just that I have yet to find it). And as much as I see concerted efforts to combat the ecological degradation of the planet as worthwhile, to the extent that these do not recognize capitalism as the most significant systemic agent of this issue, I suspect that they will be, at best, reformists on the plane of ideas who do not contribute to substantially changing the problem they are so concerned about. Call me a pessimist. I think I am being a realist.