Overview

American Fantastic challenges readers to recognize an organizing myth in modern American culture's perception of its imperialist past: 'the myth of redemptive violence.' Derek J. Thiess persuasively argues that this myth serves to obscure the deep thread of Christian supremacy that underwrites America's colonial and imperial impulse, from the early colonial period to westward expansion to the contemporary period. This American imaginary that enmeshes religion with violence is constructed in multiple contentious and productive contact zones: between genres, between cultures, and between past and present. Thiess's interdisciplinary study examines America's past and present imperial projects, from the periphery of the Hawaiian Islands to the mainland core, as they proliferate in popular story forms. By interrogating American myths, legends, and fantastic narratives across an impressive array of genres, including folk narratives, science fiction, movies, and more, Thiess exposes how the 'myth of redemptive violence' manifests in contemporary constructions of America's fantastic imaginaries.

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9780299355104

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Reviews

""Offers an original contribution to American, folklore, and fantastic studies. The selections analyzed are eclectic but the argument that surfing, pirates, John Henry, and rags-to-riches stories actually do have something in common is convincing. All are expressions of the American colonialist impulse and all involve transformative (perhaps ritualized) violence. An important, provocative study."" - Brian Attebery, author of Fantasy: How It Works ""Thiess convincingly interrogates mythologized violence in speculative literatures and media and how this mythmaking relates to Christianity and capitalism while continually generating a sense of entitlement, an American exceptionalism or Christian supremacy, that allows an ongoing exploitation devoid of guilt."" - Isiah Lavender III, author of Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement

Author Information

Derek J. Thiess is an associate professor of English at the University of North Georgia. He is the author of Sport and Monstrosity in Science Fiction; Embodying Gender and Age in Speculative Fiction: A Biopsychosocial Approach; and Relativism, Alternate History, and the Forgetful Reader: Reading Science Fiction and Historiography.

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