There's a sense in which "culture" is an inherently otherizing concept. Culture is something for those barbarians over there, not for us civilized folk. We're not having a cultural festival, we're just having a good time. What we eat is not ethnic cuisine, but just normal everyday food. We're not imposing our values, we're just doing what's right.
So, for one to talk too much of "American culture" comes across like a concession that the hegemonic project has failed. It is a project wrapped up in an ostensibly universalistic ideology (in this case, something having to do with democracy, freedom, human rights, etc.) which is what justifies America's influence all over the world. If "Americans" are just another culture or ethnicity (spoken in the same breath as "Samoans", "Maltese", "Tutsis", etc.) then the whole ideology falls apart, and we become just so many decorative artifacts in a museum display case.
It's easier to see this pattern from the outside looking in. Every great empire-building people has to believe that they have transcended "mere culture" and have achieved some special calling that sets them apart from all the other peoples in the world - the Greeks with their philosophy, the Romans with republicanism and later Christianity, the British with their rule of law, the Russians with communism... But when the empire fails, what are they left with?
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There's a sense in which "culture" is an inherently otherizing concept. Culture is something for those barbarians over there, not for us civilized folk. We're not having a cultural festival, we're just having a good time. What we eat is not ethnic cuisine, but just normal everyday food. We're not imposing our values, we're just doing what's right.
So, for one to talk too much of "American culture" comes across like a concession that the hegemonic project has failed. It is a project wrapped up in an ostensibly universalistic ideology (in this case, something having to do with democracy, freedom, human rights, etc.) which is what justifies America's influence all over the world. If "Americans" are just another culture or ethnicity (spoken in the same breath as "Samoans", "Maltese", "Tutsis", etc.) then the whole ideology falls apart, and we become just so many decorative artifacts in a museum display case.
It's easier to see this pattern from the outside looking in. Every great empire-building people has to believe that they have transcended "mere culture" and have achieved some special calling that sets them apart from all the other peoples in the world - the Greeks with their philosophy, the Romans with republicanism and later Christianity, the British with their rule of law, the Russians with communism... But when the empire fails, what are they left with?
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