Abstract
Cultural conservatives of the interwar period had imagined a Europe in decline, stuck helplessly between the pincers of two new world powers seemingly destined to decide its future. If it had not happened already, World War II made this nightmare of cultural philosophy come true. As a result of the war, the European continent was divided into two opposing blocs, each political and culturally subject to a non-European “superpower.” On both sides of the Iron Curtain, this more or less openly acknowledged disempowerment of Europe called forth new forms of ambivalence regarding the United States. In the Eastern Europe, the United States was seen by party-liners as a political enemy and potential war opponent, while many ordinary people, frustrated with communism, admired it as a beacon of freedom and prosperity.1 In Western Europe, the picture was equally complicated. While support for the Soviet Union was strong in places, the majorities in most countries regarded the alliance with the United States as necessary; moreover, Western Europeans were in dire need of American capital to rebuild their impoverished economies. However, this political dependency on the Americans was an outrage to Europe’s self-image, and the economic and cultural offerings of the Americans were therefore often received, not only with gratitude and admiration, but also with an undercurrent of resentment.2
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Notes
Arendt, “Dream and Nightmare,” p. 414. On the democratization of anti-Americanism in this period, cf. Wolfgang Wagner, “Das Amerikabild der Europäer,” in Karl Kaiser & Hans-Peter Schwarz (eds.), Amerika und Westeuropa (Stuttgart & Zürich: Belser, 1977), pp. 19–20.
But not exclusively. Postwar France in particular has a strong tradition of conservative, Gaullist anti-Americanism, exemplified in the context of literature by influential writers such as André Malraux and François Mauriac. Cf. Tony Judt, Past Imperfect (Berkeley & Los Angeles: California UP, 1992), pp. 197–98, p. 262.
Cf. Robert Singh, “Are We All Americans Now: Explaining anti-Americanisms,” in Brendan O’Connor & Martin Griffiths (eds.), The Rise of Anti-Americanism (London & New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 39.
Henri de Montherlant, Chaos and Night (1963) (trans. Terence Kilmartin) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1964), p. 241.
The leading authority here is J. E. Flower, who has studied the works of these three writers, including their hostility toward America, in a number of monographs and articles from the 1970s to the present day—most recently “American Dream—or Nightmare: Views from the French Left, 1945–1965,” French Cultural Studies, vol. 20, no. 1 (2009), pp. 47–64. See also Philippe Roger, Rêves et cauchemars américains (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Septentrion, 1996), pp. 235–287.
André Stil, Au Château d’eau (Paris: Les Editeurs Français Réunis, 1951), 174.
J. E. Flower, Literature and the Left in France (London: Methuen, 1985), pp. 151–81.
Cf. Richard F. Kuisel, Seducing the French (Berkeley & Los Angeles: California UP, 1993), p. 40.
Quoted by René Ballet in the preface to the play, cf. Roger Vailland, Le Colonel Foster plaidera coupable (1952) (Paris: Grasset, 1973), p. 9.
Pierre Courtade, Jimmy (Paris: Les Éditeurs Français Réunis, 1951), p. 11.
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Il n’y a plus de dialogue possible,” in Situations, vol. VIII (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), p. 12.
Cf. Annie Cohen-Solal, “Sartre and the United States: ‘A series of adventures in America,’” Journal of Romance Studies, vol. 6, no. 1–2 (2006), pp. 19–30.
Jean-Paul Sartre, “A Letter from M. Sartre” (1946), in Michel Contat & Michel Rybalka (eds.), The Writings of Sartre (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1974), vol. I, p. 139. For a perceptive analysis of such denials, which are often simply a preface to anti-American exhortations, cf. Philippe Roger, L’Ennemi américain, p. 12.
Jean-Paul Sartre, La P … respectueuse (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), pp. 54–55.
Cf. Boyd Creasman, “Twigs in the Spokes: Graham Greene’s Anti-Americanism,” Studies in the Humanities, vol. 14, no. 2 (1987), pp. 106–15.
The title of Boyd’s article derives from an interview from 1979 where Greene speaks openly of what he refers to as his lifelong “anti-Americanism.” The author states that he “would go to almost any length to put my feeble twig in the spokes of American foreign policy,” and admits that the question of his political belonging on the left or the right is less significant than his ongoing hostility toward “American liberalism.” Marie-Françoise Allain, The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene (trans. Guido Waldman) (London, Sydney & Toronto: The Bodley Head, 1983), p. 93.
On this aspect of Greene’s writing and the “consistently virulent anti-Americanism” that accompanies it, cf. Stephen Benz, “Taking Sides. Graham Greene and Latin America,” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 26, no. 2 (2003), pp. 113–28.
Martin Amis, “Graham Greene” (1984), in Amis, Visiting Mrs Nabokov and other Excursions (London: Penguin, 1994), p. 3.
Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955) (London: William Heinemann & The Bodley Head, 1973), p. 8, p. 15.
On the history of this tribunal and the criticisms raised against it, cf. Arthur Jay Klinghoffer & Judith Apter Klinghoffer, International Citizens’ Tribunals (New York & Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 103–62. Significantly, Russell intended the tribunal as a direct parallel to the Nuremberg Trials following World War II—and thereby implicitly linked the American warfare in Vietnam to the war crimes of Nazi Germany.
Peter Weiss, Viet Nam Diskurs (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1967).
Peter Weiss, “Das Material und die Modelle. Notizen zum dokumentarischen Theater,” Theater Heute, vol. 3 (1968), p. 33.
In Robert Cohen’s apt characterization, Viet Nam Diskurs “reads like a blueprint for a sparse geometrical pantomime.” Cf. Robert Cohen, Understanding Peter Weiss (Columbia: South Carolina UP, 1993), p. 109.
For a concise account of the missile controversy, cf. Tony Judt, Postwar (London: William Heinemann, 2005), pp. 590–92.
Cf. Günter Grass, Widerstand lernen (Darmstadt & Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1984), pp. 78–79.
For an account of Hochhuth’s anti-Americanism, cf. Heinz D. Osterle, “A Lost Utopia? New Images of America in German Literature,” in Heinz D. Osterle (ed.), Amerika! New Images in German Literature (New York, Bern, Frankfurt/Main & Paris: Peter Lang, 1989), pp. 43–82; Manfred Durzak, “American Mythologies: Rolf Hochhuth’s Plays Guerillas, Tod eines Jägers, and Judith,” ibid., pp. 213–41.
Rolf Hochhuth, Judith (1984) (Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1985), p. 59.
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© 2011 Jesper Gulddal
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Gulddal, J. (2011). Before the Tribunal. In: Anti-Americanism in European Literature. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016027_5
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