Donald Trump has frequently been labelled an idiosyncratic aberration and has equally been accused of breaking with American foreign policy tradition. However, by applying the foreign policy...Show moreDonald Trump has frequently been labelled an idiosyncratic aberration and has equally been accused of breaking with American foreign policy tradition. However, by applying the foreign policy traditions uncovered by Mead (Wilsonianism, Hamiltonianism, Jeffersonianism and Jacksonianism), scholars began arguing that Trump was perfectly traditional because he adhered to one or more of these historic traditions. Simultaneously, scholars argued that Trump rejected the myth of American exceptionalism that informs said traditions. This begs the question of how one can be traditional, yet also reject their foundational myth. Scholars had failed to consider these two facets in tandem, and had only focussed on Trump’s campaign and early presidency therefore failing to provide a prudent analysis of Trump’s entire foreign policy. This thesis aimed to rectified both by asking the following question: how has Trump’s re-interpretation of American exceptionalism influenced the utilisation of the dominant traditions in American foreign policy in his foreign policy discourse? Through the use of a critical geopolitical analysis, it was uncovered that Trump redefined American exceptionalism to an conditional state of objective greatness that only he could achieve and maintain, rather than an inherent trait. This allowed him to argue that his predecessors had made America unexceptional, stirring feelings of betrayal that he could then mobilise for his own political gain. This demagogic ‘exceptional me 2.0’ strategy shaped his application of all the four traditions wherein he blames Wilsonianism for American decline and aims to rally disappointed Hamiltonians, Jeffersonians and Jacksonians against them in order to effectuate a great reset of American foreign policy and domestic politics.Show less
At a time in which the dominant culture’s pressure on immigrants to Americanize increased, Mary Antin (1881-1949) and Abraham Cahan (1860-1951) wrote literary works that bore witness to the...Show moreAt a time in which the dominant culture’s pressure on immigrants to Americanize increased, Mary Antin (1881-1949) and Abraham Cahan (1860-1951) wrote literary works that bore witness to the complexity and personal costs of assimilation. The Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Antin’s (fictionalized) autobiography The Promised Land (1912) and Cahan’s novella Yekl; A Tale of the New York Ghetto (1896) and his novel The Rise of David Levinsky (1917) offer insights into the impact of America’s assimilationist ideology on identity construction, showing how both ethnic and national identities are imagined, constructed, and performed. The protagonists explore the social injustices Jewish immigrants suffered in the United States and the complex nature of Americanization by sometimes bluntly criticizing the pressure to conform, but elsewhere demonstrating that they have assimilated to a certain degree. The protagonists find themselves in a bind: on the one hand they need to give in to the pressure to assimilate in order to attain the American dream, while on the other hand they often feel tied to their Jewish cultural heritage.Show less
This thesis re-views Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" through the cultural-anthropological lens of "liminality" in order to understand the novel's endurance as well as its contemporary reflection of a...Show moreThis thesis re-views Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" through the cultural-anthropological lens of "liminality" in order to understand the novel's endurance as well as its contemporary reflection of a generation in limbo. This thesis contends that the liminal characteristics and rituals studied by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner in small-scale African communities can be modernized and applied to such ritualistic phenomena as road travel in Kerouac's novel, which utilizes the anonymity of the American highway as a liminal space that allows freedom of self-definition. Such a reading returns "On the Road" to its contemporary socio-political landscape and makes it clear that the novel depicts not a subversive countercultural movement, but that it is actually part of a private ritual of passage that eschews the mainstream culture only on a temporary and minimal basis. By way of the liminal phase, the narrator appropriates characteristics of the socially and ethnically marginal while reproducing and reinforcing the values of the mainstream (white) culture against these marginal people.Show less
