What's New about Exceptionalism?

Abstract

In the recent past the two moments that have elicited the most periodizing impulses are 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin wall, and 9/11, the date of the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001. To these two dates might be added a moment that is still being processed: the election of Obama in November 2008. The year 1989, the moment marking the end of the Cold War, has generated well-known narratives such as Francis Fukuyama's “end of history” and Samuel Huntington's “clash of civilizations,” as well as numerous treatises on globalization, including Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire. September 11 has been seen as a rupture inaugurating the War on Terror and paving the way for a new U.S. imperialism. Commentators such as David Harvey, Michael Mann, and Chalmers Johnson have variously characterized a post-September 11 imperialism based on unilateralism and militarism.1 Many historians and cultural critics have also seen continuities between the Cold War and the War on Terror,2 while the culture and politics of 9/11 have been the subject of a number of works, including Stanley Hauerwas and Frank Lentricchia's collection Dissent from the Homeland: Essays after September 11 (2003) and Mary Dudziak et al.'s September 11 in History (2003). Most recently, U.S. culture between the end of the Cold War and the inception of the War on Terror has been the subject of Phillip Wegner's Life Between Two Deaths, 1989–2001.