Conformity and Resistance in America, a collection of thirty six essays from various fields of the U.S. studies, addresses the American culture as a space of fruitful tensions between the generally acknowledged canons and the projects that have questioned and subverted its very foundations and archives. The book seeks to give justice to those areas of American culture that traditionally used to be treated as marginal and negligible but which in fact have added up to its uniqueness. This includes various areas of American cultural and literary studies, gender and minority studies, themes of diasporic communities, multi-ethnic and multicultural society, problems of global economy and of competing worldwide ideologies. The papers included in this book try to answer pressing questions of the American identity in the post-9/11 world, and do so by pointing to the recent humanities crisis as well as revealing moments of heterogeneity and discontinuity in the making of any culture. Contrary to Samuel Huntington's dictum telling us of the inevitable clash of civilizations, the following essays concentrate on what Edward W. Said called humanism's sphere - the sphere of antagonizing discourses and narratives which challenge rather than confirm the bases of their legitimacy. Wavering between conformity and resistance, the essays propose possible formulas for the new American identity as it strives to define and project itself into the new century.
About the Author: Jacek Gutorow is Assistant Professor at the University of Opole, Institute of English Studies. He teaches contemporary theory and British and Irish poetry and drama. He is the author of two volumes of criticism: Na kresach czlowieka. Szesc esejow o dekonstrukcji (The Ends of Man. Six Essays on Deconstruction, 2001) and Niepodleglosc glosu. Szkice o poezji polskiej po 1968 roku (Independence of Voice. Essays on the Polish Poetry after 1968, 2003). He has translated Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery, Howard Nemerov, and others. He is currently working on a monograph of Wallace Stevens. Tomasz Lebiecki is Vice-Director of the Institute of English Studies at University of Opole where he holds the position of Assistant Professor in the Culture Studies Division. His post-doctoral field of research is American social studies and political science. He is a Fulbright grantee, a member of the American Academy of Political Science, and a participant of 2003 Fulbright Institute on the U.S. Constitution. He has written various publications about American politics, especially American constitutionalism and early constitutional history. He is currently working on a book about the American Dream and Hispanic Americans.