Sharp 1993 Publishing American Identity

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POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY Vol. 12 No. 6 November 1993,491-503

Publishing American identity: populargeopolitics myth and The Readers DigestJOANNE P. SHARP

Department of Geography, 343 H.B. Grouse, Sacuse Uniuerxiy, Syracuse NY13244-l 1 GO, USA,

ABSTRACT. he recent emergence of a new critical geopolitics has opened uptraditional geopolitical texts for thorough interpretation. Yet there is little workwhich contextualizes traditional, elite geopolitical texts within the institutions oftheir social reproduction. The media are the prime example of a site ofrepresentation at which elite texts are interpreted in the terms of popular cultureand assessed in these terms. It is also through socialization at these sites thatelites form their interpretative structures. This paper will make the case for theimportance of studying popular conceptions of geopolitics in America throughan examination of the popular magazine The ReudersDigest from 1980-90.

In his recent paper on United States foreign policy after the Cold War, Vlahos 1988: 28)states:

More than other modern societies, America relies, even depends, on myth tocement its confidence in current policies. Americans are profoundly ahistorical;we do not share a coherent sense of our own history in formal, academic terms.Popular culture, not an educational system, shapes our common sense ofidentity.

If this is the case for United States history then surely the case could be made even morestrongly for geography. Unlike its counterpart in Europe, especially at the end of the 19thcentury, American geography did not receive the institutional support from state andbusiness requirements tied to overseas exploration and colonialism. Added to this is theprevalent American ethos of possessive individualism which has strengthened localautonomy and decision making at the expense of a sense of wider scale integration andinterdependence (Kirby, 1991). It is thus important for geographers to study thegeography written in the mass media because of the role of this institution in the creationand dissemination of knowledge of the world.

This paper will argue for the importance of studying popular conceptions of geopolitics,using an examination of the American edition of the popular magazine 7 e Readers Digest.The paper will posit that popular sources of information can enrich the newly emergingcritical geopolitics by providing the context within which elite geopolitical texts arereceived but also in which they are produced.0962.6298/12/06 0491-13 @ 1993 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd


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492 Publishing American identityThe geopoliticat tradition and poststructuraiismGeopolitics can be defined as a long established area of geographical inquiry whichconsiders space to be important in understanding the constitution of internationalrelations (Smith, 1986: 178). It has relied on the conceptual separation of political theoryand political practice; the supposedly objective spatial forms and place-boundcharacteristics of geography provide a transparent and atheoretical basis for anunderstanding of world politics (Agnew, 1993a).

Geography cannot, however, provide a mimetic presentation of that which it seeks todescribe. ~though certain geographical facts can perhaps be agreed upon, such as therelative size and location of continents and the distribution of material and humanresources, the use of geographical description is always selective. As the geographicalorders which form the basis of geopolitics are created rather than discovered, these orderscan always be recreated-the prevailing geographical order is also a political one. In otherwords, geography is not an unchanging or independent variable but rather it is a form ofpower/knowledge, a social and historical discourse which is always intimately bound upwith questions of politics and ideology (0 Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 192).

This is one aspect of the pos~t~cturalist critique of objective social research. Theone-to-one relationship which scientists descriptions are expected to have with theworld has been questioned (Duncan, 1990: 12). This linkage of signifier (description) tosignified (real object), the epistemological bridge supporting truth claims about theworld, has been problematized. From a structuralist position Saussure claimed thatmeaning does not lie within a stable connection between signifier and signified; themeaning ascribed to the description is independent of the real object. Meaning is notinherent to a word because of its relationship with reality but in its difference from otherwords in the linguistic system (Eagleton, 1983: 97).

The dominant modernist meaning of space has also been questioned. The Cartesianconceptualization of space, as an empty framework within which social life is played out,has been rejected because of an acknowledgement of its historical specificity. Realizing thehistorically specific nature of the meaning of space facilitates an awareness of theconstructed nature of space: of placeless, imaginary spaces such as the imaginedcommunity of the nation-state (utopias); and multiple, overlapping, contestatory spacessuch as borderlands (l~eterotopias). The work of Michel Foucault has een of primarysignificance in this current reconc~ptuali~dtion of space (see especially Foucault, 1986). Hehas highlighted the power inherent in any socially demarcated space-the power ofterritoriality and the power which can be gained from the administration of territory andthrough the contestation of this spatial institutionalization. Strategies of power alwaysrequire the use of space and, thus, the use of discourses to create particular spatial images,primarily of territory and boundaries in statecraft, is inseparable from the formation anduse of power.

The term geopolitics has been reinscribed so that it covers a wider range of approachesthan it did when it was first introduced at the turn of this century. Geopolitics stretchesfrom being employed as an aid to statecraft (for example, Gray, 1988, and other membersof the Committee on the Present Danger, see Dalby, 1990b), or being more consciouslymanipulated to this end (as with the uses made of Mackinders 1904 Heartland Thesis byAmerican politicians, see 0 Tuathail, 1992), to the creation of critical works which exposethe constructed nature of geographical orders. These latter critical geopolitical writings,often drawing on insights from poststructuralism, are primarily concerned withdenaturalizing the encoded spatial ~s~llnl)tions and related power dynamics contained


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JO NNE P. SHARP 493within the texts of international politics (for example see: Agnew, 1996; Ashley, 1987, 1988,1989; Dalby, 1988, 1990a, 1990b, 1991; DerDerian and Shapiro, 1989; 0 Tuathail, 1992;0 Tuathail and Agnew, 1992; Taylor, 1990; Walker, 1990).

Popular geopolitics: decentering the elite focusThese critical approaches tend to share a focus upon the writings of geopolitical elites suchas politicians and their intellectual advisors. The aim of this paper is to argue that a moreequal weighting between an analysis of elite texts and more popular sources ofgeopolitical information, primarily education and the media, would be fruitful. First, anover-concentration on the understandings of elites tends to collapse the sociology ofknowledge production into the internal dynamics of the geopolitical text. Geopolitics doesnot simply trickle down from elite texts to popular ones. It is thus not sufficient only tointerpret elite texts. Second, because texts produced by those who are not directlyimplicated in the power/knowledge of statecraft do not always present their arguments as apolitical statement, and, I would argue, are certainly read with less suspicion of motivethan the text of a politician, the political encoding of such texts is more subtle and thusmore easily reproduced. In order to have their texts accepted as reasonable, geopoliticianshave to draw upon discourses already granted hegemonic social acceptance. Thesediscourses are reproduced within culture. Geopolitics pulls out themes learned in schooland reproduced in the media. The media gain acceptance and power because thay aregenerally perceived as providing knowledge of the world: geopoliticians cannot ignore it.If geopolitics were to be consistently created independently of the negotiated reality of itsreadership, it would face an insurmountable crisis of representation.

Suggesting that there is no single, all-powerful elite view does not involve advocating aconceptualization of power dynamics which gives equal force to all interpretations of asituation. Indeed there is a hegemonic geopolitical view of nationalities and states not leastbecause of differential access to the mass media which various social, political andeconomic groups, and individuals attain. But the media do not simply reflect theperceptions of the political elite. They are not part of a monolithic state structure such asthat suggested by Horkheimer and Adornos (1972) culture industry or Althussers (1971)ideological state apparatuses. Nor, however, do they innocently announce some form ofbottom up mass understanding. Instead they should be regarded as part of a Gramscianhegemony-which explains, legitimates and at times challenges the dominant understand-ing by pulling it through the lens of popular discourses. The nature of explanation by elitescannot be understood independently of knowledge of wider cultural values. What is ofinterest is the question of which discourses are utilized and why it is that certain of thesediscourses resonate particularly well with the population. It is illuminating to study what itis that is used by the media to tie events happening in another part of the world to theconcerns of the potential readership.

An empirically grounded piece of evidence for the importance of popularunderstanding of international politics is Rieselbachs (1966) study of isolationism versusinternationalism in American politics, He shows that voting for isolationism orinternationalism in the House of Representatives could not be understood with referenceto party allegiance. Instead the nature of political opinion was most closely matched toregion of origin. This certainly suggests the existence of processes of political socializationwhich have some degree of autonomy from the central dictates of the Americangovernment. Trubowitzs (1992) study of the American national interest similarly


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494 Pub&b&~ American iderconcludes that American leaders autonomy in making foreign policy is contingent upondmestic politics (Trubowitz, 1992: 188).

Geopolitics should, then, be seen to have a virtual rather than an actual existence (0Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 193). It should be regarded in the sense in which Said talks ofdiscourses, as forming an intertextual frame of reference (Said, 1979: 42) with whichpeople can interpret subsequent events which come to light, rather than as having anontological status of its own. It follows that geopolitics is more about selecting elements ofthe socially (at present, predominantly nationally) negotiated truth for emphasis thancreating events from scratch. The scripting of geopolitics cannot be removed from theprocess of the social reproduction of knowledge.

This is, of course, not to suggest that discourses drawn upon by geopoliticians presentthemselves as a direct outcome of the specific contexts within which they are socially andmaterially embedded. In fact, like Bat-&ess mythologies, more often than not they havethe task of giving an historical intention a natural justification, and making contingencyappear eternal (Barthes, 1973: 142). This dehistoricizing (and deg~ographicali~ii~g) hasthe effect of depoliticizing speech. I do not mean by this that a geopolitics which giverecourse to mythologies either makes up or denies the existence of political phenomenaand events already incorporated into knowledge; quite the contrary:

its function is to talk about them, simply, it purifies them, it makes theminnocent, it gives them a natural, eternal justification, it gives them a a claritywhich is not that of an expfanation but that of a statement of fact (Barthes,1973: 143).

This is not, then, simply a manipulative ideological tool although it can have a similareffect. Instead it is a historically constituted way of understanding the world. By imposingnarrative closure, in the form of reference to commonly accepted truisms, thecomplexities of life are presented in easy to manage chunks, the conceptual apparatus fortheir interpretation already having social existence.

Another way to view such language is as common sense. Common sense, as Ross hasargued, is a powerful discursive practice:

It works to incorporate and rearriculate the most uncommonly uncritical ideasand perceptions as part of its expl n tory presentation of the values thatsurvive-the vafues that endure--in a world whose volatility is depicted aspolitically hostile to the stability of all values (Ross, 1990: 9).

Common sense appeals through the obviousness of its claims; it makes the world simple,and manageable. This is facilitated thraugh a silencing of complexity, of problems whichdo not produce right or wrong, true or false conclusions. In effect, the elementscomplicating simple notions of right or wrong are disciplined to binary simplicity bypulling the world through the discursive practice of common sense.

Many writers have formulated conceptions of the importance of mythology to theconstruction of North American identity. Campbell suggests that:

If all states are imagined communities, devoid of ontological being apart fromthe many and varied practices which constitute their reality, then America is theimagined cornmuni~~~~ excekrzce. (Campbetl, 1992: 105).

The remainder of this paper will examine the mythologies which structure the constitutionof one understanding of America during one particular historical period, the second coldwar.


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JOANNE. SHARP 495The term second cold war suggests a distinct time period. Indeed it did mark a

difference from the previous period of detente, 1969-79 (Halliday, 1983). After this pointthere was an increase in tension, a breakdown of attempts to negotiate and a rise ofmovements opposing internal repression. Yet the second cold war should still be seenwithin the framework of the whole cold war as significant themes are continued. By thisstage in the development of American-Soviet relations, in American geopolitics thedivision between east and west was so ingrained in the structure of world-scale politicalnarratives that it no longer needed explanation. To a majority of the population it hadbecome a matter of common sense that the USA and USSR were polar opposites.

This discursive structure is a prevalent one in American society and can be foundrecreated in school textbooks, the scripting of movies and news reports, fiction andfactual accounts. I now want to examine this common-sensical construction of thegeopolitical world through an examination of the second cold war representation of theSoviet IJnion in the popular magazine, Rea&rS Digest, between 1980 and 1990.*

Geopolitics and you: popular participation in the creation of a geopolitical enemyY e Readers Digest was established in 1922 by Dewitt Wallace and his wife Lila BellAcheson. Initially the magazine reproduced condensed versions of articles from other,predomin~tly regional, sources which the Wallaces thought deserved a wider readership.The Wallaces continued to dominate the editorship of Z e Readers Digest until Dewittsretirement in the mid-1970s. The characteristic booklet form of the Digest was designed asa collectible volume of lasting interest without the overly demanding readingrequirements of a book-length tome (Dorfman, 1983).

Since its initial publi~tion The &&as Digest has become incre~ingly popular so thatit can now guarantee advertisers a circulation of at least sixteen and a quarter million inAmerica alone (me Readers Digest, 1991). The Digest reaches a more diverse range ofconsumer subgroups than any other American magazine (Edward Thomson, editor-in-chief 3976-84, pers. comm. 1991). It is also the worlds most widely read magazinealthough each version is specifically targeted to the tastes of the national populace it isreaching.

The editor-in-chief wields a great deal of power.3 The editorial process is based on theart of condensation which relies on the ability to distil out the essence without changingthe basic thrust of the argument (Thomson, pers. comm. 1991). A chosen article moves itsway along murderers row (Schreiner, 1977: 49) from the most junior editor to theeditor-in-chief, each of whom rewrites the version passed on to her/him. There are nowritten guidelines avaiiable for new employees. They learn what is required of them byreading what is sent up the editorial hierarchy by those senior to themselves (Schreiner,1977). Because of the magnitude of the condensation of articles (for example a novel to tenor twenty small pages, a Time or Newsweek article to two to four pages) the editorialdecision of what is of importance in the article is obviously an intensely political act as itwill greatly influence the overall impression the article will convey. Furthermore, there is apolitics to the choice of sources picked to represent the national medias coverage ofAmerican concerns. In the period studied, the majority of 89 pieces were originals writtenfor the Digest, seven represented condensations of books, and the remainder came from anumber of newspapers.* The authors chosen for inclusion in the Digest also indicate aparticular selectivity. In the geopolitical writings there is a predominance of authors fromthe Committee on the Present Danger, military and government elites, and university


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496 Publishing American identityintellectuals, although articles on similar topics are presented with the same authoritywhen written by less technically qualified authors such as the novelist Tom Clancy.

7 e Readers Digest has been in existence for around the same period of time as theUSSR. Initially the magazine was sympathetic to the Russian revolution because it was seenas a movement against what this American viewpoint regarded as an undemocratic,hierarchical European form of society. By the 1930s however, it had forged an exclusivelink between the IJSSR and Communism and as such wrote of the newly emerged state as adanger to the emerging American world-order based on free trade. Walter Burnham hasnoted that collectivism has meet with antipathy in American society. And, although headmits that sometimes paranoids have real enemies (Burnham, 1982: ZSO), henevertheless acknowledges that this anticollectivism, expressed primarily as the repressionof individuality, forced interpretations of Soviet action into a more sinister light than thestates military capacity, economic potential or actions might otherwise place it (Campbell,1992: 159). The Self-Other dualism of the IJSA-USSR structured all articles concerning theUSSR in the period 1980-90. This structure has become so deeply embedded in the Digestargument that the magazine was highly sceptical of the authenticity of even the mostfar-reaching changes in what was the Soviet Union.

Articles are written in such a way that they perpetuate a particular discourse of Americawhich will be described below. This is not always done directly. A dualism is set upbetween the USA and the USSR so that a description of events in, or characteristics of, theUSSR (totalitarianism, expansionism and so on) automatically implies that the oppositeapplies to the US (in this case: democracy, freedom .). The Soviet Union becomes anegative space into which i e Readers Digest projects all those values which areantithetical to its own (American) values. It is not possible to have coexisting but differentvalues in this system; always one set of values is right, the other exists in op~sition and isthus wrong. By implication, rhe positive side of this value binary can be found to exist inthe positive (conceptual and physical) space of America.

In his detailed study of popular conceptions of America, Robertson (1980) examines themyths that have had the greatest resonance with the contemporary populace. I want to pullout two general themes from his work which I think provide the greatest latent source ofimagery of the Americanness, both at the individual and state level, to be used indiscussions of geopolitics. These are: mission and destiny, and relations betweenindividual freedom and the state. Many discourses structure difference (see Table 2) butthe major schism is that constructed around the opposition of individual freedom tocollectivism, The American mission is thus to promote the good side of this value system.It will become obvious th t the two are in now way unrelated, nor do they exhaust thepossible mythologies from which geopoliticians can draw. Nevertheless, I feel that theyoccupy a particularly important position in the hegemonic American collectiveimagination.

The cause of America is in agreat measure the cause of all mankind. (Paine, 1978:402)[The American Revolution was] actually to espouse the cause and expand thebase for freedom in the world (Robertson, 1980: 71)It is as though America as a whole h d espoused this sect-like destiny ~. thewhole of America is preoccupied with the sect as a moral institution.(Baudril~~rd, 1988: 91)


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498 Publhhing American identityThe above quotations, originating from such diverse pens as Thomas Paine and JeanBaudrillard, highlight that, more so than in other nationalisms, the predominant Americanself-conception is one of a national exceptionalism. In the hegemonic narrative of itshistory, America is not merely a territorial nation-state in the manner which we might usefor European countries. America can also be seen as an idea transcendent of nationalborders: America is a place which is at once real, material and bounded (a territory withquiddity) yet also a mythological, imaginary and universal ideal with no specific spatialbounds (0 Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 196). Liberation from Britain was not seen by theFounding Fathers as being limited to promoting freedom in America but should signal achange in the human condition around the globe. With an almost religious sense ofmission, Americans are told to feel that they have not been granted the riches, size andpower which they possess for no reason; it is there for some God-given purpose. The mythof America posits that Americans have, and should have, an unrivaled influence in humanaffairs (Robertson, 1980).

In addition to the experience and constant reworking of the revolution, this mythologycan be linked to frontier settlement: The moving frontier was never only a geographicalline; it was a palpable barrier which separated the wilderness from civilization (Robertson,1980: 92). America has thus been given the duty of expanding this civilization beyond itsown boundaries; intervention beyond its territorial limits is not only legitimate but a moralresponsibility. This was reinforced in the postwar period by the rising economic, culturaland political power of America, climaxing in pax-Americana which effectively shaped thepostwar order around the American system.

7&e Readers Digest scripting of America in relation to the USSR in the context of 1980sgeopolitics conveys a clear sense of mission. Indeed 26 of the 89 pieces devoted to theSoviet Union in the period 1980-90 were overtly structured around this heroic narrative.In the case of articles centered on military and diplomatic themes, half were structured thisway (Table 2). Articles describing Soviet invasion anywhere in the world-past, present orthreatened-imply the moral duty of America to resist it. The invasion of Afghanistan in1980, for example, was explained by our failure to act to defend the freedom of thatcountry:

we have led the Russians into irressitible temptation our repeated failuresto take any action in one crisis after another have led the Soviets to conclude thatthey could pursue their own desires without fear of reprisal. (Leeden, 1980: 73).

Furthermore, it was feared that if we allow the nuclear balance to tip strongly in Moscowsfavor, Western Europe will inevitably be brought under predominantly Soviet influence(Griffith, 1980: 149, emphasis added).

This approach is premised upon a bipolar structure of power: Afghanistan and Europewill be held either within the Soviet or the American sphere of influence; there is no thirdoption. The Soviet Union is evil and threatens the survival of the free world unlessAmerica can act preventatively. Any American action is therefore automatically legitimated.In the morality of their attempts to resolve this power stalemate, Americans are pictured asinnocently ploughing on while the Soviets are seen to exploit every advantage. One 1981article on Soviet negotiation style states that the search for a reasonable middle ground ofargument, the heart of the western sense of negotiation, is foreign to them (Rowny, 1981:67). America occupied the moral high ground. The Soviets occupied the mirroringconceptual space; they represented a moral void (Barron, 1983: 214).

Indeed, so much is this the case that Gorbachev, hailed as the savior of freedom by so


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JOANNE. SHARP 499many in the west, is treated in X&eReaders Digest with immense scepticism. He was seenas presenting a challenge to the ~erican-centered mission of morality:

His goal, the most ambitious ever sought by a Soviet leader, has profoundmeaning for the Western alliance. It is nothing less than achieving, in the eyes ofthe world, full moral equivalence with the US That would mean the end ofAmerican leadership of the free world, the very concept of which would nolonger exist. (Rosenthal, 1988: 71-72).

7&e Readerk Digests narrative structuring of the American destiny is clearly based on anextreme moral distancing of the two superpowers. common sense dictates that theAmerican position was the moral one, the Soviet the immoral. When they were seen toconverge, as under Gorbachevs leadership they sometimes did, Americas unique moraimission was challenged. If America were to lose this hegemony of moral perspective, itwould collapse (Baudrillard, 1989: 91). Its major transcendental signifier, the moral highground of the city on the hill, would be lost.

The Founding Fathers beiieved that the American destiny was to spread freedom. Althoughassumed to be universal, this notion was a particular construction of freedom; the kind offreedom assured under the democratic government system, a freedom which strove forthe maximization of individual happiness within society. Thomas Jefferson was the majorproponent of freedom in early America. He argued that the action of individuals should berelatively uncontrolled by government:

I am convinced that [native American Indian] societies which live withoutgovernment enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happinessthan those who live under European governments. (Jefferson, 1975: 415).

Part of the American freedom was the position of the individual vis-&vis society. This isseen as an unantagonistic relationship as the betterment of the individual is regarded ascoincident with the betterment of society. Contemporary students of American society stillreport the working of this notion:

Society is no more or less than the colIective expression of the will of the people;the people are sovereign; society, then, represents the will of the sovereign.(Robertson, 1980: 219).What strikes you in the American system, is that there is no honor in breakinglaws, nor prestige in trangression or being exceptional. (Baudrillard, 1988: 92).

In this vision, there is no class conflict-the economic gain of one would enhance thepossiblities open to another. This produces a myth of homogeneity of opportunity whichreinforces the democratic nature of society. Any differences in socio-economic levelstherefore are seen as a result of the natural differences in peoples abilities.There is, then, not the degree of class allegiance in America that a European mightexpect. Indeed, Robertson suggests that the very notion of class is divisive, like frontiers,and thus works against the equalizing dynamic of the continuing American revolution.Most Americans, as surveys have attested, would like to insulate themselves from theextremes of class iden~fication and thus label themselves middle cfass (Fussell, 1983).


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500 Publishing Ameri.an iaferztityBy changing the emphasis from minimal state activity in individual life to a prioritization

of freedom from any non-denlocratic form of governments this mythology of America alsolegitimated~erican-backed intervention around the globe. Such action, always motivatedby a stated desire to spread freedom, introduces an innocence into the arena of conflict.

The Readers Digests second cold war Soviet Union was not free. Twenty-four articles,structured around the contested discourse of individual freedom, are centrally concernedwith tales of totalitarianism, repression and unjust imprisonment. Articles centrallyconcerned with Soviet domestic affairs and individuals were structured by this discourseeven more frequently (Table I). Furthermore, antithetical to American individualism aredescriptions of state limitations on individLla1 religious beliefs and economic initiatives.Mhat is more, the USSR was seen as determined to export this system in competition withthe natural diffusion of freedom from America.

The Soviet lack of freedom is explained as a result of the states reliance on ideology.One article suggests that, to Soviets, ideology is more important than military strength. Itgives them justification for their actions (Barnes, 1990: 107). The timeless sense of missionand inherent morality of American actions is presented in the Digest SLSvidence that suchactions are free of ideology. Drawing on notions of self-evident logic and natural beliefs,the titfes of articles claim to reveal dangerous myths about nuclear arms (Teller, 1982),provide factual advice on what you should know about American defense (Koster, 1983)and plain old common sense about strategic defense (Clancy, 1988). In stark contrast tothe USSR, then, ne Readers Digests cold war America was apolitical in intention; it simplymoved along the inevitable, yet sadly contested, path towards the liberation of naturalhuman needs

The factual@ of the Digests view of American moral intent and action is furtherreinforced by the form of its dominant narrative style. The articles convey the appearanceof objectivity through the prodigous use of factual language (in a typical issue, claimsSchreiner j1977: 169],4300 facts are checked). Ideology, then, was associated only with theLJSSR which sought to undermine the natural progression of the American historicmission.

The Soviet individual is seen as very much subservient to the whims of the statebureaucracy. Soviet people are described as victims of the ideology of repressive equalitywhile suffering from the gross inequity of the nepotism and favoritism of the~~~~~en~~at~~a system. Because of the binary discursive system from which irhe ReadersDigest draws in order to create its characterization, the Soviet state was pictured as unlikethe American equivalent in that it operated without any heed to popular opinion.

As with notions of freedom, descriptions of the relation between the individual and thestate are reinforced by the style of articles. There are a large number of articles that presentimportant questions and problems which they answer by offering a faCtLId account of howa group of individuals (either western or disaffected Soviet) has overcome this problem byapplying such enduring American values as honesty, family values and charity. Thislegitimating strategy of including familiar examples of real in~lividuaIs having solvedproblems provides the normative aspect of The Reader? Digest. By including examples ofindividuals who have solved problems (which are relayed in such a way as to have a directbearing on the life of the reader) the Digest implies that the reader too could have someeffect if s/he acted (unlike the poor Soviet who must accept the dictates of her/his Party justas they must accept the weather). Not only does this tie the concern of the article to (whatshould be) the concerns of the reader (if s/he is a decent American) but it also reinforcesthe power of the system defined here as western democracy based around a notion ofpopular pa~icipation in national affairs in the world system (Dorfman, 1983: 153).


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JOAP*NE. SHARPConclusion: representation, repetition and geopolitics

501

The example of me Readers Digest has demonstrated the substantial linkage between themagazines image of itself as representative of American values and the way in which itrepresents the Other, the former Soviet Union.Obviously not all articles concerned with the Soviet Union in 7&e Readers Digest aregeopolitical in content. However, there is a constant set of themes running through allSoviet stories-whether ethnographic, sociological, religious and so on-which provide aconsistent characterization allowing the credible creation of a Soviet geopolitics by theDigest. Thus every representation of the USSR is a political action. It fits into the discursivestructuring of the USA and USSR as polar opposites: a structure centered upon irresolvabledifference. Of the 89 articles considered in this IO-year period, there was only one whichwas sympathetic to the Soviet case. This was a report on the December 1988 Armenianearthquake. But this was constructed as a human tragedy beyond geopolitical bounds. And,even this was darkened with the specter of a bureaucrat unwilling to deliver bread to avillage because there was no surviving official to sign for it (Anon, 1989: 145).

This structuring of two discrete and internally homogenized spaces is recreated throughthe use of subsidiary discourses of Otherness proving the absolute incompatibility ofAmericans and Soviets. The most important of these include the discourse of time (eitheremployed to suggest an unchanging essential Soviet or as a degenerative system, incontrast to the progressivism of America), of rationality (describing Soviet action whichcannot be comprehended as logical within the American-universal system of rationality), ofoverly aggressive masculinity (structured around the aggressive and unnaturalpenetration of unwilling societies by the Soviet military and propaganda machine), andalso drawing upon the discourse of environmental determinism to suggest that even theSoviet weather works to structure their difference from Americans (see Table I; Sharp,1991 .

Although the USSR was created as the ultimate alter ego in ne Readers Digest duringthe Cold War, other places are also represented in ways which are used to reinforce thejournals utopian image of America. In parallel to Judith Butlers explanation of theconstruction of gendered identity, the Digests conception of American identity isconstituted through a stylized repetition of acts not [through] a founding act but rathera regulated pattern or repetition (Butler, 1990: 145). 7 eReaders Digest seeks to describethe diversity of the world; however, by distorting all the images through its own narrowrepresentational lens and measuring these places against its own values, diversity is lost:

underneath the monthly anecdotal variations lies a profound structural unity.Each selected piece cannot help but repeat the same language, procedure,technique and ideology as all other pieces. The same flag, climate, and geologyare cyclically reiterated on all apparently independent islands. (Dorfman, 1983:139)

Especially by referring to its definition of morality as an apparently universal measure, theDigest recreates America by continually comparing others to it. This morality and thetranscendental knowledge of common sense structure the constant repetition of theseother places as simulacrum, referring to an original which does not exist, 7 e ReaakfsDigests mythos of America.

It would be surprising if a magazine with the popularity of fie Readers Digest were at aradical disjuncture to the dominant view. Nevertheless, it has been the argument of thispaper that it is important to study the magazine as a source of geopolitical knowledge


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502 Publishing American identitybecause this is the role it plays within the sociology of knowledge reproduction inAmerican society (especially in the context of the poor state of geographical education inthis country). Not only is geopolitical information represented in this text but it iscontextualized within a wider undertstanding of the nations in question.

In essence, then, in making the case for popular sources of geopolitics, this paper hasargued for a move away from the sharp distinction between the high politics of statecraftand the mass politics of the media. The media are a site of representation structured bydominant, historically reproduced discourses and partially scripted by elites whocontribute articles or are written about. However, elites are socialized through this sitethemselves and are thus inclined to write their geopolitics in such a way that they will notirresolvably challenge the common sense of their readership.

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank John Agnew, Jim Pickett and three anonymous reviewers for their extensivecomments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes1. It is important to note, however, that even these seemingly objective measures are not

independent of their historical construction, as illustrated by the case of the British Imperialsystem used in the objectification, classification and thus statistical domestication of its Empire.

2. The characterization of the content of me Readers Digest articles is based on an analysis of thediscursive content of each article concerned with the Soviet Union. A tabulation of the narrativestructure of the articles and their discursive content can be found in Tuble 1.

3. The editor-in-chief in fact decides upon policy. This, as Edward Thomson (editor-in-chief1976-84) has stated (pers. comm. 1991), is because Be Readers Digest is a digest of articles, not anews magazine.

4. These included three articles from 7&e New York Times, and one each from The [London] Timesand Financial Times, Newsweek, Time, The Washingtonian, Foreign @airs, The National Review,Encounter, Halpers~ The Wilson Qwzrterly, 7 ~ Virginian Pilot, and 71~ Wall Street Journal.

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