Intercourse in Every Direction': America as Global Phenomenon

Abstract

In news magazines & scholarly journals, a wide-ranging "globe-talk" has arisen since the 1970s in response to recent transformations in the world. Much of the discourse reflects a growing international concern about US dominance of the world's economy & cultural production. Understandably, the discourse is about agency. The US has dominated global affairs since WWII & especially since the end of the Cold War - militarily, economically, & culturally. It is sometimes forgotten, however, how much America is a product of the internationalizing processes it has come to symbolize. This essay argues that the US is as much a product as an agent of globalization & that, if we accept the logic of globalization, the US as a national culture is being undermined in much the same ways as other countries. The title of the paper is borrowed from Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels's Communist Manifesto, an ironically prescient document that 150 years ago outlined the processes of globalization that characterize the US's global history & forecast the transformations we experience worldwide today.