Exploring the archetype of americaness and the excemplary principle: the fear of traveling abroad

Introduction. The attacks to Paris occurred in November 13 of 2015 shows sadly two previous assumptions. The impossibility to control leisure industries as cultural entertainment, museums and tourism, conjoined to the fact that terrorists have selected travelers over recent years as their primary targets. Some voices claim that terrorism and colonial order were historically interlinked. Let’s explain that colonization in past centuries was supported by an ideology of the colonized Other. Bullets kill people, but words indoctrinate their minds. Edward Said has developed a model for understanding the pervasive nature of European ethnocentrism in novelists such as Joseph Conrad who portrayed the cultural values of the empire [35]. Empires have expanded their influences in the world by imposing an ecumene of exemplarity in which the periphery accepts European superiority. Beyond this center, the interaction between Europeans and nonEuropeans engendered what Turner-Bushnell and Green [41] call a sphere of influence. These borderlands were flexible, and they were continually negotiated. The connection between imperialism and literature has been widely studied in such seminal texts as Rule of Darkness [2], The Theory of the Novel [27], The British Image of India [14], Imperial Eyes [33], and Culture and Imperialism [35]. This essay focuses on the role played by American ethnocentrism in the modern travel books such as in Charles Robert Temple’s American Abroad [39]. Temple’s book sets forth the perspective of Americans looking outward. Today, it shows the basis for an American outlook on the post-9/11 world which combines American exceptionalism with a pervasive fear. One of the aspects that differentiate American from British ethnocentrism is the sentiment of exceptionalism with respect to Others. In the United States Americanness is lived as a superior allegory to be applied to the world for making it a safer and better home for humankind [9, 11, 36, 45]. Though the lens of this essay review we understand how the Other is constructed by privileged American citizens in view of their expectations, hopes, and fears.

Preliminary debate

The habits of travelling are common sense to all cultures of the globe. Many theories have been developed thanks to the experiences and stories derived from these practices. In his book on America, François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) says there were two types of travellers: those who go by land and those who go by sea. Many discoveries that today sheds light on our geographies, derived from travellers’ courage to go beyond the boundaries of their respective civilizations [7]. One of the main problems in understanding the potential power of travel writing depends on the attention this genre receives from generation to generation. Travels activate social imaginaries which follow imperial interests, along with landscapes and cultural encounters. Citing K. Oberg, Rachel Irwin [20, 31] alludes to the encounter among ethnicities as a culture shock, which ranges from a stage of understanding to a profound crisis – honeymoon, crisis, recovery and adjustment. While tourists generally are embedded in a honeymoon phase, the native Other is imagined as a polite and gorgeous friend. Explorers, anthropologists, and aidworkers face another, more disappointing facet. A radical crisis of identity may take some months. When this arrives, the foreigner has serious problems in coping with natives. Depending on how this is resolved, the visitor will return to home or stay. The process of recovery consists in the assimilation of all information, customs, and practices to survive in this new society. After this stage, the adjustment will take place. Depending on how the guests are negotiating with natives, their knowledge has further value for others. Tourists, for example are subject to peripheral and superficial encounters with natives while anthropologists produce another kind of knowledge.

The American economist, Robert L Heilbroner days that imperialism as a project was inextricably intertwined with capitalism. He claims that three key factors were important to consolidate European conquests: the impetus for discovery; second, the decline of religion; and third, rise of science [16]. One of the disciplines that encouraged the quests for knowledge about non-Europeans and drawing on the methods of classical positivistic social sciences, anthropology emphasized the importance of direct observation of observed peoples. Two main assumptions inspired these new forms of making science. The first was the belief that people lie or simply sometimes do not recognize their drives and behaviour. Researchers are obliged to be there, contrasting the speech with nonverbal practices. The first anthropologists who launched the study of exotic peoples were involuntarily manipulated by governors or officials who read their ethnologies with the aim of more effective control of native peoples [1, 5, 23, 24, 33, 40, 32). The production of knowledge, imperialism, and travels became intertwined. Novels, and guidebooks have been historically employed as ideological instruments of indoctrination whose efficiency rests on what they cover, not what they overtly describe.

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American ethos and its connection to feelings about strangers.

When traveling as tourists for recreational purposes, Temple adds, Americans should understand that the visited lands are not populated “entirely” by barbarians (p. 115). To know more about exotic countries, they have to read magazines or other publications to learn the experience of other travelers, and to become aware of which place is safer or dangerous as well as the things they can and cannot do. Traveling can be conceptualized as an art, where the subject develops new abilities to deal with transportation, new customs, hostile migration officials, and other problems. Readers should follow Temple´s steps to achieve a successful adaptation in other cultures.

On the surface, the primary concern of this book is the implicit view that the world seems to be a hostile place. Thus, knowledge and know how facilitate the symbolic resources to mitigate the lapses of anxieties such as the validation of passport at migration office. Guide books are of paramount importance so as to be familiar with the visited destinations. A coherent interpretation of the tourist originating country should be kept in mind at time of purchasing the ticket. Temple gives the example of a friend who traveled to Beirut buying his ticket in Israel and was rejected upon arrival as he was accused of being Zionist spy.

Temple’s use of such terms as “entirely barbarian” appear ethnocentric because it assumes the foreigners live in uncivilized cultures. Also, his perspective is from the nation of travelers like Israel, the United States or Britain as the point of sale of the ticket can and should determine how dangerous the final destination may be. If Americans go to a destination whose government has a relationship with the United States, the possibility of some kind of adverse treatment might occur to a traveler. This opens the question of the relationship between safety and security. Being American abroad means privilege because Americans carry with them a symbolic reminder of US supremacy over the world. Today, in large part because of the US led global war on terror, it also raises the specter of terrorist attacks arising from resentment on the part of dominated people.

These two elements, American privilege and Americans as terrorist targets, are present in the Anglo-American archetype promoted by tourism related industries.

Temple’s book contains many examples of people who have traveled to Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Being American means superiority over other ethnicities due high income relative to people in other countries. Of course, this is far less true today than in 1961 when Temple wrote the book. Also, Temple assumes that because Americans are educated in a civilized culture where the respect for the Other symbolizes the tenets of democracy, it means that Americans are willing to learn about other cultures. However, this way of constructing the Other leads to a bipolar logic where the ‘we’ is superior to the ‘they’. To be part of an elite, selected for salvation, brings serious problems for American tourists as symbolic representatives of the United States. Of course, American tourists are not responsible for the policies followed by US, except when they are so designated such as officials in the US State Department. Nevertheless the Anglo-American ethnocentric discourse upends the connection of cause and consequences, conferring the burden on tourists. This can be seen in current guide books which present the Middle East as a dangerous destination for Americans. Tourists become involuntarily ambassadors of their own state. It is important not to lose sight that this ethnocentric discourse was not created by 9/11, it was present long before this event, but to some extent 9/11 closed the hermeneutic circle between a frightened American citizen and the way to construct Otherness. At the time of 9/11, US President George W. Bush encouraged Americans to confine their travels to the domestic US and at the same time he militarized US borders and restricted migrants as undesired guests.

To understand this pervasive logic, one must understand two relevant aspects of ethnocentrism. On one hand it promotes the exemplary nature of one group or ethnicity over the rest. The limits of uniqueness determine an exclusionary circle of belonging, which is symbolically justified by certain fabricated virtues. Valorizing American tourists is a subtle way of accepting the hegemony of the United States and its democracy in the world.

However, in the dialectic of ethnocentrism, being part of the elite has its costs. Whenever Americans cross the borders of their country, many risks are posed in their trips, from a terrorist attack to a crime, destinations are classified according to the importance of Americaness and their safety.

Moreover ethnocentric discourse neglects the importance of the Other except through the lens of one’s own culture. It poses Americans as the most desirable of tourists. It reminiscent of horror movies like Hostel I and II where American tourists were captured and tortured by a criminal network operating in Eastern Europe. Millionaires paid huge fees to torture a tourist. Hostel’s dialogues not only portrays the world as hostile, but also convinces the audience that victims’ value depended on their nationality. Mass entertainment such as horror movies often depicts Eastern Europe or rural zones as hostile and dangerous destinations for civilized tourists. The same sentiment of exceptionalism that leads Americans to be proud of their civilization instills terror when they have to leave home.

Conclusion. Literature has often served as an ideological mechanism of power for the center to exert hegemony over periphery. Substantial studies have shed their light on this slippery matter. However, the problem of imperialism seems not to be limited to literature alone. Other texts such as guidebooks or travel writing, construct a biased landscape of the world. This is the case in the example use in this essay, Temple’s Americans Abroad . Though lacking in overtly discriminatory or racial considerations, Temple does his text covers what in our consideration is one of the tenets of Anglo-American ethnocentrism, the sentiment of exception. Temple diagnosis is that the world is stereotyped as a dichotomy between dangerous and safe. It appeals to America as the cradle of democracy, civilization, and legal order. In view of this, Americans never should lose sight that they are ambassadors of their superior culture. Even if the enemies of democracy want to attack Americans wherever they are, this should not stop Americans from showing that they are inhabitants of a city on a hill.