The Emergence of American Occidentalism in Literature and Culture: Disguised Identity

This book deciphers its lurking war of ideas—American Occidentalism—where black and white figures wrestle with American identity. Spanning from ancient Greece to the present, it scrutinizes a contested legacy of power, existence, and self-reinvention. The book presents an innovative conceptualization of Western thought, casting the discourse of black and white intellectuals and politicians as a treatise on Occidentalism. It envisions American Occidentalism as an inner discourse where Critical Occidentalists interact textually and historically in response to the prevailing crosscurrents. To capture this narrativity, the first chapter establishes the book’s new terminology, rereads ancient Greek texts, and critiques the works of key anthropologists like James G. Carrier and Fernando Coronil, as well as cultural theorists such as Hassan Hanafi, Xiaomei Chen, and Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit. The other three chapters analyze the Occidentalist tendency in the discursive, official, and intellectual practices of the Early Republic, the twentieth century, and the twenty-first century. Ideal for scholars and individuals interested in postcolonial theory, (African) American literature, and political sciences, this book challenges readers to see the Occident not as a fixed entity, but as a dynamic, self-critical tradition.