After the American Century

Abstract

Brian T. Edwards’ book boasts of an insightful interdisciplinary approach thatdraws upon his expertise in anthropology, literary and cultural studies, Americanstudies, and Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) studies. His approachand overall argument can benefit both the specialists in these disciplinesand the non-academic audience interested in the MENA region’s contemporarycultural history and connection to the United States’ international cultural politics.Edwards introduces two principal concepts to formulate his arguments:the “ends of circulation” and “jumping publics.” In his view, the former describes“new contexts for American texts” and the latter explicates “the wayculture moves through the world in the digital age” (p. 27).He offers four reasons why the circulation of cultural products “acrossborders and publics” is important to the contemporary American audience.
 First, “The U.S. Department of State has invested time and funding in propagatingthe circulation of American culture.” Second, “American media venueshave a continuing interest in this topic, whether in the coverage of theEgyptian revolution or in the popular fascination with books such as ReadingLolita in Tehran (2003) that depict Americans or American culture displacedin the Middle East.” Third, many “popular and influential writers,” including“the developmentalist Daniel Lerner in the 1950s to Thomas Friedman in the1990s and 2000s to media studies journalist Clay Shirky, assume a technocentricor cyberutopian determinism,” and thus consider “access to newtechnologies and media” and “modernization and freedom” inevitably intertwined.And fourth, “In the fields of American literary studies and comparativeliterature, the ways in which the American culture and literature aretaken up around the world puts pressure on the ways of doing things in thosedisciplines” (p. 16) ...