The Construction of the American Self

I'm thinking of how allegory may have been one way to attempt a construction of an American self at this moment in history. It seems to me that this form of writing places narrative at the very heart of identity formations. In other words, we and the world around us are textually produced--thus, implying that there is always another narrative beyond that which we perceive as a "stable" reality. I know that the risk here is that it suggests that there is no self, ultimately. That's not what I'm thinking. What I'm thinking is that allegorical fiction gave Americans the distance and space to think about themselves in terms of their symbolic roles. And as a result, it also enabled a conversation about the fundamental ambivalence produced by that reflection.

I'm still thinking this through...