American Self-Identification: A Strategy of Maintenance

The tensions of historical and cultural belonging and relations to colonialism, nationalism and racism in their diverse forms, in general, help in assuming what self-concept America takes for her self- and the way she identifies –recognizes and associates- herself through foreign relations and policies to relate herself and contribute to the rest of the world, or the ‘other’- enable us to imagine what identity America represents at certain eras. Wars for America have always played a significant role in the definition, representation and negotiation of identity and can be understood as global in scope but national in design. The present article traces the qualitative transformation of America’s identity through the study of war trilogy of Civil War, World War I and World War II.