Abstract
America was constructed on, in Paul Ricoeur’s phrase, ‘a semantics of desire’. The relationship of sexual desire to ideology was embedded deep within the consciousness that shaped American culture. From our beginning America was seen in terms of pastoral feelings and beliefs that defined the land sexually as feminine. According to these metaphors and images, the land was virgin and female while men were hunters or yeoman farmers who conquered and lived off the wilderness. The disruptive energy of the unconscious that animates the dialog between desire and consensus in American literature and culture originates in this initial conception of America as a land of desire.
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Notes
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© 1990 Samuel B. Girgus
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Girgus, S.B. (1990). The American Paradise: Freud, Ideology and Narcissism. In: Desire and the Political Unconscious in American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20723-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20723-7_2
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