Croatian Leftist Critique and the Object of American Studies

Grgas, Stipe. (2014). Croatian Leftist Critique and the Object of American Studies. In: Cross-cultural Readings of the United States, May 24, 2014, Zagreb.

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Abstract

The article argues that one possible way of understanding the United States at the disposal of American Studies scholars working in the region of ex-Yugoslavia is by retrieving the leftist critique as it was articulated by members of the Croatian Praxis writers. The author begins with the contention that the prevailing representations of the United States today present it as the exemplary country of capitalism. Arguing that extant Americanist paradigms let this reality slip under their screen, he goes back to the said leftist critique and reads how they provide a conceptual frame with which to engage the United States. He elaborates this frame in three ways: first, he recalls the Praxis group’s engagement with the United States when the journal was being published; second, he draws attention to Vanja Sutlić’s and Ivan Kovačić’s pronouncements on the United States as the exemplary capitalist country; and third, he foregrounds the Praxis group’s Marxist engagement with Heidegger. It is this engagement that the author contends is of particular relevance for understanding the present mutation of capitalism and the place of the United States in the contemporary world. In conclusion, the author argues that a reading of the United States through Marx and Heidegger repositions the work of William Spanos within the archive of the discipline.

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