Search

This article critiques the post-national analytic frame now on the rise in American studies by considering the post-Fordist conditions of its very possibility. Given capitalism's evident shift away from a national regime of accumulation and toward a transnational one, transnational American studies should not presume itself to be automatically performing progressive ideological work. In the context of the postwar university's mediating role between knowledge and politics, the post-national frame in today's American studies appears to be positioned quite similarly to the national frame of the Cold War era that it displaces. Both frames delineate the imaginary field within which the ideological struggles of their respective historical moments occur. To become more politically effective, post-national American studies should aim its critiques less at the past-tense national narrative than at globalization's future-tense narrative of inevitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]