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Toward a Revolution in American Studies: The Counter-Narratives of José Martí and Herman Melville

The field of American studies underwent significant changes in the 1980s as a result of the civil rights and antiwar movements of the ‘60s. Native American literature for the first time became part of the canon, along with many previously ignored classics from the African American and Latina/o traditions. Women’s writing gained a new prominence, and the established white male writers were reread with a close eye to the peculiar gaps and aporias of their texts. In short, the anti-racist and anti-imperialist character of the popular counterculture movement led to a restructuring of the discipline. The term “multiculturalism” emerged as the organizing principle of this process, as “inclusiveness” replaced the longstanding tradition of white male exclusionism. While these developments have broadened the understanding of North American history and society, at the level of American culture as a whole – the culture of all the Americas – a kind of reactionary political camouflage has been at work, in which the anti-imperialism of the ’60s is invoked but at the same time scaled back to make it acceptable to the ruling class in the United States. This is particularly evident in the ascendancy of a North American multiculturalism that celebrates diversity but fails to practice it intellectually. American studies thus has not produced critical works that pair Latin American and Caribbean writers with those from North America. Instead, there has been a reaffirmation of American Exceptionalism – the myth that the US is a special sort of pluralistic society, where everyone has an equal place. Yet the nature of this place at the banquet of American pluralism is rarely questioned, and the colonial or neocolonial context of American multicultural literature is not engaged. Multiculturalism in fact might be called a hustle.