A Desire Called America

Critics of American exceptionalism usually view it as a destructive force eroding the radical energies of social movements and aesthetic practices. In A Desire Called America , Christian P. Haines confronts a troubling paradox: Some of the most provocative political projects in the United States are remarkably invested in American exceptionalism. Riding a strange current of U.S. literature that draws on American exceptionalism only to overturn it in the name of utopian desire, Haines reveals a t