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This thesis discusses the impact of the Haitian Revolution on the United States as a lens through which to view the transnational nature of American exceptionalism. It concludes with an articulation of the necessity of incorporating this relational nature of United States identity development into high school coursework, and advocates for teaching about the Haitian Revolution as an effective means through which to do this.

<p>This dissertation explores the philosophical, cultural, and political implications of the discourse on humanity and human subjectivity in the time of the Anthropocene that engages a wide geographic and temporal range. Specifically, I examine the ways in which three selected literary works of Daniel Defoe from England, Toni Morrison from America, and Arundhati Roy from India interact with the intricately contested notions of what it means to be a human being sharing the earth’s natural habitats with another entity traditionally defined as “other,” categorized around species, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, class, and even religion.</p><p>I argue that Defoe’s <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, the allegedly first modern novel, inaugurates the reigning understanding of human being as <i>homo sapiens</i> represented by Crusoe’s rationalized humanity, the essential feature of which has come to engender a threatening condition both for the nonhuman and non-European world; that Morrison’s <i>Paradise</i> and Roy’s <i>The God of Small Things</i> each in their own way not only problematize and challenge the overall tenet of Defoe’s metaphysical rationality in Euro-American and Anglophone cultures, but also investigate a more secular and thereby alternative idea of human subjectivity as <i>homo ecologicus</i>, so as to either (re)construct or restore a vibrant and sustainable community based on a notion of human not as hierarchically superior to “other” entities, but more horizontally and inclusively situated within one larger common habitat called the planet Earth.</p><p>Postulating the conviction that one cannot fully understand the aforementioned alternative conceptualization of human being as <i>homo ecologicus</i> within the confines of divisive identity politics based upon racial, ethnic, national, religious, gender, and sexual orientation categories, it is a pivotal concern of my thesis to bridge the ostensibly unquestioned bifurcation between human beings and Nature: that between the West and the East, that between male and female, that between reason and intuition, and that between knowledge and life. In performing these wider ecological inquiries into radical modes of human existence, I place the core value of nonfoundationalist thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche, Alfred North Whitehead, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Edward Said, among many others, in critical dialogue with the study of literature with a view to thematizing the broader question of how a literary narrative as a historical and cultural institution imaginatively reframes our self-consciousness of the precarious condition of the Anthropocene. In conclusion, I argue that the study of literature and other humanities that valorize a vital interconnectedness between humans, objects, and the environment offers the potential for an inexhaustible and enduring habitat in which <i>homo ecologicus</i> continues to, in the words of Nietzsche, “remain faithful to the earth,” embracing <i>homo sapiens</i>.</p>

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L’idée d’exceptionnalisme américain a fait l’objet d’une attention particulière depuis le début des années 1990. Souvent décriée, parfois louée mais généralement réifiée, elle est devenue un concept déterministe au service d’une lecture linéaire de l’histoire des États-Unis depuis l’indépendance. La nécessité de déconstruire cette invariance simplificatrice et d’étudier l’exceptionnalisme comme une production sociale évoluant dans le temps en fonction de son contexte national et international est à l’origine de ce travail. L’exception américaine ne peut, en effet, être pensée uniquement à partir du national tant elle répond à des représentations conjuguées de Soi et de l’Autre. À la charnière entre le national et l’international, la politique étrangère est donc un poste d’observation privilégié de la construction de ce trait identitaire américain. L’ambition de cette thèse est de confronter le concept d’exceptionnalisme aux sources afin de mieux comprendre ce qu’il signifie pour nos acteurs et de mesurer son impact sur la politique étrangère des États-Unis durant les années d’après Guerre froide. Face à l’évolution du système international, la puissance nordaméricaine redéfinit, en effet, son rôle et son engagement extérieur. Après un XXe siècle marqué par des affrontements idéologiques globaux, les États-Unis se posaient en champion d’un nouvel ordre international garant de l’universalisation des valeurs démocratiques et libérales. Profondément moral, ce positionnement justifiait alors l’engagement des États-Unis dans une nouvelle lutte entre la modernité et le fanatisme à la fin des années 1990 avant d’être discrédité par l’enlisement militaire en Afghanistan et en Irak. Le changement de paradigme de la seconde moitié des années 2000 minimisait alors l’impact de la représentation exceptionnelle du Soi américain sur la définition de la politique étrangère. / The idea of American exceptionalism has been the subject of many studies since the beginning of the 1990s. Usually criticized, sometimes praised but generally reified, it became a determinist concept creating a linear perspective of U.S. history since the Independence. Also, the necessity to question this simplistic invariance and to study exceptionalism as a social production evolving with its national and its international contexts is at the origin of this project. Also, this American exception cannot be considered only through a national prism since it mixes representations of the Self and the Other. Between domestic and global affairs, foreign policy, then, represents an excellent observation point of the construction of this American identity feature. The purpose of this dissertation is to question the concept of exceptionalism through the analyze of primary sources in order to have a better understanding of its meaning for the actors and to evaluate its impact on U.S. foreign policy during the post-Cold War years. Indeed, the North-American power had to redefine its international role and engagement whereas the international system knew a dramatic evolution. After a 20th century marked by global ideological conflicts, the United States championed a new world order standing for the universalization of liberal and democratic values. This deeply moral position, then, justified the U.S. engagement in a new fight between modernity and fanaticism at the end of the 1990s before its discredit in the wake of the military stalemates in Afghanistan and Iraq. The change of paradigm during the late 2000s also minimized the impact of the exceptional representation of the American Self on the making of U.S. foreign policy.

It is now well-known that The King and I has little claim to truth. Recent research has exposed the inaccuracy of the “biographical” works on which the musical is based: Anna Leonowens invented many things about her personal background and experiences. Much of her life, then, is a contrived fantasy. Yet her life of fantasy has been resurrected in countless adaptations, including the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and its 2015 revival production, that ceaselessly draw audiences. The fascination of American audiences with Anna’s tale lies their belief in the timeless American ideals that her fantasy employs: those of freedom and equality, which undergird such myths as American exceptionalism and American multiculturalism. The appeal of this cultural fantasy is illuminated by examining the history of the Cold War era in which The King and I was created, as well as the politics of President Trump that define recent years and influence the creation and reception of the revival show (and its 2016-2018 national tour). America today is occupied by the same conflicting desires for integration/internationalism and isolationism of bygone times; today, the idea of a superior America is still upheld by a fear of the Other. Examining how the visual elements, songs, and performances of the original and revival musicals both reinforce and undermine the fantasy of cultural superiority will reveal how Americans continue to fall under the spell of fantasy, and how a connection to the past sheds light on what it means to be an American today.

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