Reworlding America: The Globalization of American Studies

Traditionally, Eurocentrism has served as a central, organizing principle and an overarching, ideological framework to conceptualize the social, political, and cultural history of the United States. Having articulated this claim early on, in what follows I intend to do two things: one, briefly discuss the validity of the claim by demonstrating the embeddedness of Eurocentric thought and perspective in the conceptualization of American social and cultural history; and two, argue for the use of certain critical models that take into account the pan-American dimensions of the social, cultural, and intellectual commerce that link the Americas to a larger, global world.

Eurocentrism refers to Europeans, and more. It is not simply ethnocentrism in a European context; it is this and much more. It is "a pervasive condition of thought" (José Rabasa, 18). To Peter Gran (Beyond Eurocentrism), Eurocentric thought embodies the following ideas: the notion of a single, originary center, namely Europe, out of which everything superior emerges; the geopolitical division between a homogeneous West and a substantive, exotic East or, rather, Europe, the center, and the rest of the world, the periphery; the inevitable dependence on Europe by the Third World given the intrinsic richness and superiority of European technology, social thought, and cultural forms; and that all things modern emerge in Europe, which implies the onward march of progress and democracy for all humanity, whereas traditionalism and tribalism hinder the growth of the East (3). Eurocentrism, note Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, "is the forcing of cultural heterogeneity into a single paradigmatic perspective in which Europe is seen as the unique source of meaning, as the world's center of gravity, as ontological 'reality' to the rest of the world's shadow. Eurocentric thinking attributes to the 'West' an almost providential sense of historical destiny" (1-2). As J. M. Blaut observes, these ideas, of a privileged center and of teleological progress, provide a basis for viewing the rise of Europe as a global power "in terms of internal, immanent forces" (1492: The Debate, 28), that is, European society and culture are viewed as possessing certain intrinsic features that give them a decided advantage over non-European societies. Elsewhere, Blaut calls such a perspective "Eurocentric diffusionism" or "tunnel history," in which Europe is regarded as the single most important player in world history (Colonizer's Model, 5).

Gran, Shohat and Stam, and Blaut's observations underscore the notion that Eurocentrism involves more than simply being biased in one's thinking or perspective. They point to the role of myth, ideology, history, and geography in the establishing of a center-periphery dynamic in Europe's historical and contemporary relations with non-European nations and peoples. Providing an economic perspective on Eurocentrism, Samir Amin (Eurocentrism) notes that the emergence of capitalism, the Renaissance, and modernity coincide with the rise of Europe as a colonial power. It is not so much a coincidence as it is a conjunctural phenomenon. Amin writes, "Eurocentrism . . . implies a theory of world history and, departing from it, a global political project" (75). Amin's focus on the complicity of the Renaissance in the gradual consolidation of a hegemonic Euro-centered worldview obtains an intercontinental perspective, because what happens in the Americas after 1492 becomes pivotal toward understanding how and why Eurocentrism has had a powerful hold in the writing of American history. A fundamental paradox emerges: while Eurocentrism affirms the cultures and peoples of Europe as paragons of progress, beauty, and civilization and "institutes European subjectivity as universal" (Rabasa, 208), it does so as it confronts its distinct others, the slaves brought from Africa and the native peoples of the Americas. It is precisely its validation of the experience of a certain group of people, the Europeans, as universal in nature, its affirmation of a Greco-Roman heritage in the face of an exotic, Oriental, and Amerindian heterogeneity, and its emphasis on singular causes in the monothification of world history that marks Eurocentrism as an ideological, mythified construct. Eurocentrism can aspire to...