Ali BehdadA Forgetful Nation
On Immigration and Cultural Identity in the United States
Ali Behdad is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution, also published by Duke University Press.
Preface ix
Introduction: Nation and Immigration 1
Imagining America: Forgeful Fathers and the Founding Myths of the Nation
23
Historicizing America: Tocqueville and the Ideology of Exceptionalism 48
Immigrant America: Liberal Discourse of Immigration and the Ritual of
Self-Renewal 76
Discourses of Exclusion: Nativism and the Imaginging of a “White Nation”
111
Practices of Exclusion: National Borders and the Disciplining of Aliens
143
Conclusion: Remembering 9/11 169
Notes 117
Bibliography 193
Index 205
