A Janus-faced Empire

Abstract

Upon gaining independence from Great Britain, the newly formed United States of America underwent a rapid process of cultural decolonization, including the development of a native and self-sovereign ‘American Literature’ throughout the long 19th century. Yet just as quickly, the US pursued a concurrent process of overseas empire-building that brought into the American cultural and literary sphere a number of (neo)colonies including the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Nicaragua, Liberia, Alaska, and Hawai’i. The result is a body of un- and under-studied literature from American-occupied territories, past and present, produced by subalterns who wrote while subject to the Stars and Stripes, often during a period of recolonization after the initial European colonizers had been supplanted. As I argue in my article, by using this innovative transcolonial framework we can chart and consider this concurrent process of decolonization at home and recolonization abroad, juxtaposing works of literature from US/American writers and gaining crucial insight into both the United States and the nature of colonialism itself.

Keywords

• American literature
• American Empire
• (Post)colonial literature
• British literature
• national literature