Christian Manliness and National Identity: The Problematic Construction of a Racially Pure Nation

First paragraph: Recent work in cultural and literary studies has come to question the common assumption that each nation-state embodies its own particular culture. As anthropologists Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson observe, "[The] assumed isomorphism of space, place, and culture results in some significant problems" (7); what happens, they ask, to "Indian culture" in England? What of (post)colonial cultures and the effect they have upon their (former) masters: "To which places do the hybrid cultures of postcoloniality belong? Does the colonial encounter create a 'new culture' in both colonized and colonizing country, or does it destabilize the notion that nations and cultures are isomorphic?" (7—8). Gupta and Ferguson's questions follow naturally from Edward Said's contention that "the experience of imperialism [be taken] as a matter of interdependent histories, overlapping domains" (49-50).