and the rise of ISIS led to a wave of protectionist nationalism in the West, especially more recently, with the flood of Syrian refugees who fled to Western countries over several years. In spite of all these unfortunate dynamics, the majority of people in Western cultures still wish to do away with the oppressiveness of metaphysical centers and embrace multiculturalism, while continuing to celebrate the fact that ultimate truths have been deconstructed in the age of postmodern thought. This only proves that the movement away from absolutist thought must forge on.
To return to the numerous criticisms of postmodernism, the underlying dissatisfaction with the loss of grounding that deconstruction and postmodernism imply are a symptom of how uncomfortable such a loss can truly make those accustomed to certainties, which explains why many people are “tired” (should we read “scared”?) of political correctness and tolerance. In his notorious critique of postmodern theory, Terry Eagleton complains that discourse stopped being “about something for somebody,” while it makes “language itself one’s cherished object,”1 which he calls language’s ultimate act of narcissism. Fredric Jameson claims in a quite similar fashion that postmodernism’s insistence on language distracts from historicity and throws the contemporary world into an aesthetic mode that emerges “as an elaborated symptom of the waning of our historicity.”2 Again, such critics fail to see the connection between modernist and postmodernist de-centering of power, which has been at work since the end of the 19th century, and the actual changes that have taken place in the world in the last century: successes of women rights movements, of affirmative action in education, and many others, whose momentum cannot really be stopped today by some dramatic (and hasty, desperate, ineffective) executive actions coming from the White House.
Right after the attack on the Twin Towers on September 2001, journalist Edward Rothstein, and many others, hurried to explain the attack as one of the many negative effects of postmodern globalization and decentralization of Western power. Unlike Jameson and Eagleton, who demanded more social involvement on the part of “theory,” Rothstein’s criticism saw in postmodern thought a reflection of the dissolution of power, which allows the cultural “Other” to take a more active role in the world; according to Rothstein, this Other needs to be contained, not coddled. He believes that globalization (the merger between the world’s cultures and economies) should only take place along with a return of foundationalism and the reinstatement of the West as the upholder of “truth.”3 This is precisely the approach of Donald Trump’s White House, running counter to some of the global progress that has already been made, in an attempt to resurrect the past that is most likely doomed to fail (though it can certainly have a big impact on the world).
After September 11th 2001, several wars followed. What they triggered was, expectedly, a war of words as well. Very divergent opinions in relation to terrorism and America’s response to it were, and to this day are being voiced. In 2003, the Iraq war had a lot of supporters (many regretting that support after a few years), and many a flag were displayed in front of people’s houses. Others protested against the wars, particularly the one in Iraq, pretty much going against the discourse established by the media and politicians at the onset of the war. What that hegemonic discourse seemed to suggest was that the violence of the Middle East’s reaction to globalization confirmed the need for a more brutal enforcement of Western hegemony in the world. The justification of such a mentality as Rothstein’s and other journalists’ and commentators’ was, at the time, that the spirit of freedom endorsed by the market had come under attack.
In reinstating the West (particularly the US) as holding the key to effective globalization, globalization was thrown back into historicity by being revealed more overtly as continuous with the Western history of power. One aspect to the larger problem of silencing critiques of the West’s global agenda was the attack on poststructuralist theory. Purging globalization of the decentralized “theory” that interfered with its effectiveness made it easier to justify the wars against Middle Eastern nations. William Spanos, a Vietnam scholar, immediately made the connection between the emerging wars at the dawn of the 21st century and America’s other wars, particularly Vietnam. He suggested that, aside from the economic and political rationale behind all American wars, there is also an ontological principle of “Truth” that informs liberal/capitalist societies.4 That was part of the celebratory discourse that accompanied the new wars: it was the justification for the return of Truth that was celebrated in the wars with Afghanistan and Iraq that began in 2002 and 2003.
A closer look at Rothstein’s commentary sheds light on this renewed call for ontological truth and imperial “clarity” regarding America’s errand in the global wilderness, to use Spanos’ terms. It is a good starting point for an analysis of the stakes involved in identity (particularly American identity) and its tendency to territorialize that which participates in its formation. Globalism can be seen as a stage where America is continuously forging its identity, in competition with other identities.
Within two weeks of the terrorist attacks in 2001, The New York Times published an article by Rothstein, in which he in effect expressed relief that terrorism gave new justification for America to act as an imperialistic world power. He gave voice to what seemed to be in the mind of many Americans, given the haste with which many people embraced the idea of a war with Afghanistan and Iraq, following the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in September 2001.5 Instead of reading the terrorist attacks as a reaction to globalization, people who saw terrorism as an aberration (branding terrorist acts as motivated by inexplicable hatred) perceived those who opposed globalization as problems to be solved by furthering this process of globalization. Rothstein was happy to dismiss all the efforts of theorists such as Derrida and those of cultural activists (such as those in support of minority rights) to shed the burden of metaphysical thought, which had become oppressive to those not aligned with power or with “the center.”
In order to advocate the return of the metaphysical center, Rothstein called the efforts of postmodern thought and deconstruction “illusions.” He predicted that the negative connotations that the concept of imperialism had acquired were going to be reversed so that, in his vision of globalization, “instead of exploitation, imperialism is now being associated with democratic reform, sometimes to the great satisfaction of its subjects.”6 What he seemed to imply was that this “great satisfaction” was incidental, not even necessarily desirable or planned for, but it was one positive outcome of the necessary process of imperialist subjection. Rothstein concluded that the world clearly needed the power of the West, particularly of the United States, to be reasserted in “continuous and continuing decisions, active involvement in the destiny of nations …. Sounds familiar, yet strange. An old idea transformed. Call it Empire.”7
These statements, certainly not singular in the political and intellectual scene at the very beginning of this century, contained a whole history of thought behind them. When we entered the age of diversity, traditional Western values became exposed as constructed, so it was comforting to find (again) a context suitable to uttering such words that advocate “Empire.” This is just more proof that, even though the contemporary world has witnessed major transformations, such as women’s rights, affirmative action, or others, some foundational patterns of thought remain intact. There is always a new territory to defend, and in the “current events” this territory is not merely “the United States,” but rather something that is defined as the identity of the United States, namely, freedom. In relation to the American Mission in Vietnam, for instance, Spanos recalled that the discourse of freedom, spouted at the Vietnamese people as the “‘self-evident’ New World truths” and rejected by a radically different culture, instigated “the violent remapping of Vietnam.”8 In other words, Vietnam had to be turned into the territory of freedom.
The perversity of an abstract territory (which could be things like nation, religious belief, utopian imaginings of perfect societies, or something like freedom) is that it can be applied to anything and translated