The Importance of Being Ugly: Anti-Communist Anti-Imperialism

This article examines William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick's 1958 best-seller, The Ugly American, and argues that the fundamental proposition of the novel is a certain aestheticization of American politics in the Third World. The article locates this argument in the context of 'modernization theory' and shows that this aestheticized politics is an attempt to overcome resistance to modernization. The text suggests that the global anti-Communism of modernization must incorporate a specific strategy of self-representation in order to avoid direct associations of modernization with westernization. Finally, the article interprets this strategy of representation from the perspective of the history of American anti-imperialist rhetoric.