“But what do we mean by ‘American culture as a whole?’ We all use that easy expression, but can we say what it means? Let me remark that I, too, have suspicions about that word ‘coherence’. I’m very much in favour of disruptions and fractures that challenge all the given and established coherences of what is called ‘America’. Coherence and symmetry ring too much of tyranny and imperial power for my taste. But it’s not just for the sake of re-forming a new coherence that disruption is necessary. It may sound trite to say so but history is a discontinuous Read more