Exceptionalism and Difference in American (Literary) Studies

This essay evaluates contemporary approaches to the study of American Exceptionalism through a review of two recent books: Ian Tyrrell's American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea (2021) and Jordan Carson's American Exceptionalism as Religion: Postmodern Discontent (2020). The essay argues that the two books provide compelling accounts of how discourses of American exceptionality have come to organize political, intellectual, and literary life in the US. However, it suggests that Tyrrell's and Carson's critiques of those discourses would benefit from a clearer heuristic distinction between the exceptionalist belief that the US is a singularly providential country and the empirically valid belief that it possesses a specific historical trajectory that differentiates it from other nation-states.After more than three decades of postexceptionalist scholarship that has trained us to look for circuits, symmetries, and solidarities across national lines, we would do well to return to . . . [asking] how particular US economic, political, and social differences have been created and maintained over time.