Forum (Dec 2007)

Scenes from the Decline and Fall of the American Empire

  • Darryl Jones

Journal volume & issue
no. 05
pp. 1 – 15

Abstract

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At their zenith, empires become haunted by images of their inevitable demise. This article examines historical theories of imperial decline, as exemplified by the works of Edward Gibbon, C-F Volney and Oswald Spengler, and suggests a recurring concern with 'revolutionary orientalism' in such writings. The USA is currently in its late-imperial decadent phase, and much given in consequence to apocalyptic or catastrophic narratives. These are hardly new - the late-Victorian British Empire produced a large number of disaster fictions hardly less spectacular, with H G Wells foremost amongst his contemporary catastrophists - London is destroyed many hundreds of times in the period's fiction. The article closes with an analysis of 9/11 fictions and theories, and looks particularly at the novels of Don DeLillo and Jonathan Safran Foer.