Deconstructing America: Representations of the Other

Anthropology's major concern has always been the encounter with the Other. "Deconstructing America" attempts to locate the European discovery of America within the study of representations of Otherness. Peter Mason acknowledges that America was part of the European imagination before its discovery, but challenges the claim that the European vision of America is merely a distorted view of some extra-European reality. Drawing on anthropological, literary and philosophical studies, he shows how European representations of America constitute a cultural monologue which tell us more about the Old World than the New.