America in Literature and Film

Taylor & Francis

Utilizing Lacan's psychoanalytic theory and Zizek's philosophical adaption of it, this book brings into dialogue a series of literary works, films and critical theory that are concerned with defining America. Elbeshlawy demonstrates that texts which particularly focus on explaining how other texts about America communicate an unreliable message, themselves communicate an untrustworthy message. Writers and films discussed include Adorno, Kafka, Sontag, Said, Hassan, Dogville and Birth of a Nation. > Utilizing Lacan's psychoanalytic theory and Zizek's philosophical adaption of it, this book brings into dialogue a series of modernist and postmodernist literary works, films, and critical theory that are concerned with defining America. Ahmed Elbeshlawy demonstrates that how America is perceived in certain texts reveals not only the idealization or condemnation of it, but an imago, or constructed image of the perceiver as well. In turn, texts which particularly focus on demonstrating .