American Exceptionalism as Religion: Postmodern Discontent by Jordan Carson

Abstract

Reviewed by: American Exceptionalism as Religion: Postmodern Discontent by Jordan Carson Christopher Douglas Jordan Carson. American Exceptionalism as Religion: Postmodern Discontent. Ohio State UP, 2020. xxi + 222 pp. Jordan Carson's American Exceptionalism as Religion: Postmodern Discontent is an engaging new entry in contemporary literature and religion studies. Focusing on Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo—two postsecular standbys—in refreshing conversation with Ana Castillo and George Saunders, as well as with Marilynne Robinson, perhaps the greatest living American Christian writer, Carson aims to show how each "portrays American exceptionalism as a compelling but corrupted religion that comprises both an object of belief and a set of disciplines" (23). The book focuses on the ideology qua religion of American exceptionalism, which Carson defines as "the myth of election" (3), "America as a chosen nation" (4) of God's chosen [End Page 577] people on the promised land, distinguishing it from American civil religion. These contemporary writers "aim to divest 'America' of its claim to transcendence and reveal America for what it is: a place and a way of government, a set of nontranscendent but worthy ideals, a place of freedom but also of oppression, not wholly evil but also not a chosen nation" (23). Carson examines the "specific religious practices" depicted by these writers, both good and bad, and "how these practices shape individuals morally, spiritually, emotionally, and aesthetically." Thus, for Carson DeLillo's work is a study in "the damage wrought by misplaced faith" (26), in which characters yearn for transcendence and sometimes come close but only through the apophatic tradition, the attempt to imagine via language a transcendent that lies beyond language. His discussion of DeLillo's use of the apophatic tradition is illuminating and engages with previous discussions (notably John McLure's and Amy Hungerford's) on DeLillo and mystery, even if that mystery "does not offer a coherent theological or spiritual vision" (56). Placing Castillo within the larger frame of Chicano fiction and "liberation theology" (76), Carson's smart analysis of hybrid religion and trickster ethics is alert to nuance. Insofar as American exceptionalism is a form of religion, it ends up being an obstacle to pluralist, hybrid, and mestiza spirituality. Similarly, hybrid pluralism marks the kind of religious engagement Carson finds most evident in Pynchon's fiction, where "spiritual disciplines . . . those depicted unironically and in earnest—translate into greater investment in the world: works of compassion, care for the earth, and opposition to all forms of domination" (131). Spiritual pilgrims, in this sense, stand against the religion of American exceptionalism as "the myth of [American] election" (99). Carson's analysis of empathy and compassion in the fiction of Saunders, perhaps the least-studied among his five authors, is rewarding and smart. Carson shows how Saunders's work repeatedly questions a cluster of negative "spiritual disciplines" (131) associated with American exceptionalism: notions of self-improvement and self-sufficiency, economic gain as moral progress, and the power of positive thinking, which ignores the social world and other people. Carson's reading of Robinson, meanwhile, focuses on her non-fiction essays. In these, "Robinson castigates the resurgent Christian right for surrendering religion to ideology and confusing religious devotion with cultural identity" (171). His critique of Robinson's dismissal of the Christian Right as engaging in "ideology" rather than (true) religion is insightful and refreshing because he treats the ideology [End Page 578] with the same judicious expansion of the term "religion" that he's given to American exceptionalism. Noting that "the semantic slippage in Christian also makes Robinson's own views hard to pin down" (174), Carson persuasively concludes that "Robinson wants her two primary arguments—the essence of Christianity and the essence of democracy—to be heard by two audiences: a narrower Christian audience, and a larger audience of the general American populace." Thus, his interpretation of Robinson's democratic individualism as "a theopoetics that allows for pluralism and diversity to become a source of aesthetic fullness" (199) in Whitman's tradition is likewise convincing and well-articulated. Intriguingly, Carson expands his discussion of American exceptionalism to include related discourses such as the American dream. In DeLillo's and Castillo's works, the dream's ideology of success...