America’s World Identity: The Politics of Exclusion

What is America's national identity? This study offers a new perspective into this question. It argues that this identity is 'constructed' rather than 'essential' and reflects the politics of exclusion. This identificatory exclusion has been globalized through American economic, cultural, political and military expansion. The study provocatively draws upon poetry, literature, art, architecture, gangsta rap, landscape and cityscape to illuminate the construction of America's national identity and illustrates how this has been globalized in an increasingly post-modernist condition.