Ends of Empire

Unraveling the myth of Western supremacy: A critical discourse analysis of U.S. news reporting on international student migration from China.

“…While it was not new to report the interplay between the othering of China and the unfolding of U.S. self-imagination (see, e.g., Jannuzi, 2003; Kim, 2010), the analysis and interpretation of the “us–them” paradigm featured in this study typified a pioneering endeavor in the sense that they put forth an empirical and elaborated account of how the politics of global inequities, as reflected through the identified discourses governing the inferiority/superiority divisions between China and the United States, were effectively perpetuated through ISM from China. In other words, ISM from China tended to become a vehicle for reiterating the enduring colonial order of a U.S./West-led notion of knowledge and development, thereby ratifying the continued legitimacy of U.S. exceptionalism.…”

Tidying Up after Repetition

“…Jodi Kim, writing from Asian American studies, traces the "protracted afterlife of the Cold War, " the material and ideological structures that continue to propel American empire in the twentyfirst century. 35 Similarly, Jordanna Bailkin describes how imperial habits and institutions-the "afterlife of empire"-continued to shape the everyday practices of British people in the de cades after South Asian and African decolonization. 36 And in black studies, Saidiya Hartman explains the "afterlife of slavery" as "a mea sure of man and a ranking of life and worth that has yet to be undone.…”