Of Difference and the Exceptionalist Fallacy

            Reading this week’s articles (especially the piece by Traister), I had an epiphany that may or may not be true but nevertheless earned the title of “epiphany” in my thinking about American/US Literary scholarship: there is no greater sin in a piece of literature than to make a statement that may or may not be construed as exceptionalism.  I use the word “sin” not because I want to make fun of the zeal with which the field has attacked American exceptionalism, which I think remains an interesting phenomenon that seems to inform a great deal of US literature and, as Traister contends, American Studies scholarship.  I say “sin” because in the process of American cultural critique, it seems we have developed our own preferred dogmas and values (“liberal democracy” for Traister) that we check all objects of critique against with what Paul Riceour, speaking more broadly, rightly called a “hermeneutics of suspicion”.  We (often including me) are often suspicious of any marker in scholarship that claims exceptionalism, but the question I want to raise is whether claims that acknowledge a difference between nations or cultures necessarily leads to exceptionalism.  Does a multicultural framework inevitably lead to exceptionalism, as scholars such as Walter Benn Michaels have suggested in their critiques of “diversity”?

            Traister points to the disciplinary schism between “American Studies” and “Comparative Literature” as a way to demonstrate how the transnational shift in American Studies seems to find cultural difference in itself exceptionalist: “With its pedagogical and critical dependence on national traditions whose integrity is assumed as a point of departure, comp. lit. embodies the problems of nationally identified critical practice that the transnationalization of American Studies seeks to solve” (18).  As the ALH special issue articles demonstrate, nobody seems to be making the argument that the nation does not still hold at least some value in discussing texts transnationally. However, in pointing to Comparative Lit as a discipline that is by definition transnational, I see an acknowledgement of difference among “national traditions” that makes the “full” transnationalization of American Studies difficult for a practitioner to adopt: the “national tradition” of language.  In American Studies, the common language of English, while scholars often include passages in other languages, predominates the transnational discussions, whereas in Comparative Literature, scholars are routinely expected to have fluency in multiple languages relevant to their research interests and read journals and publish in those languages. 

            Maybe one point of agreement, and what Traister seems to be driving at in claiming that some aspects of Transnational American Studies amount to “academic imperialism,” involves universal claims about “Americanness” that, while often sexy and potentially impressive to a reader, tend to ignore at least some group, literary form, or cultural expression that would need to be included in order for such a claim to be universal.  And admitting this limitation in our work admits our own limitations as scholars with the specific sitz im leben we were discussing last week in relation to the “anxiety” of the transnational turn, for me that was something like “Appalachian Suburban.”  Yet, this doesn’t mean that we should not look for and acknowledge the transnational influences on the perhaps regionally distinctive literature we may be inclined to read.  As for me, now is probably as good a time as any to look into some Spanish lessons.