Dialectical and Transcultural Contexts: Otherness, Subjectivity, and Coleridge’s Vision

Abstract

America does not exist.¹ Sis is insisto: American literature does not exist. And, of course, both very much do exist. But can the American canon be said to exist through a solid and useful definition that has a deep consensus purchase? It seems unlikely. At least since World War II, American literary studies have defined itself through a crisis of identity. Before that point, most critics complacently accepted a “high-brow” and supposedly unified set of works. No longer. Many Americans now clearly register their discontent regarding any literary collection that undersells their own, and other’s, specific ethnic heritage. Similar to how the French and Netherlands registered a “non” and a “nee” in 2005 to the prospects of a constitutional unification with a wide European identity, the “American people” appear resistive to canons that fail to adequately respect local identities and ethnicities. No conglomerate of writers will survive as “the American” identity unless some effort is made to recognize