T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

eceived in the broad lap of our great Alma MaLeC.Here individuals of all nations are melted into anew race of men, whose labours and prosperity willone day cause great chanqes in the world.(1957,39)After two hundred years the sources and compositions ofthe "new race of men" have expanded far beyond Europe, but theprocess of constant uprooting, transplantation, adaptation andrenewal continues. Definlng Anerlca has been as much anAmerclan preoccupation, as much as ~t has been a foreign one.In a way, lt is part of a triangulation process by means ofwhlch lndlvlduals and soclet~es locate themselves,geographically, polltlcally and culturally. Even before thediscovery of Amerlca "Aristotle attrlbuted the peculiar virtuesof the Greeks to the qeographlcal chance which placed thembetweer the energetic but anarchlc types of Europe and thelngenlcus but servlle nations of Asla" (Bradbury and TemperleyL981,2!. In the same way,other people over the centuries haveattempted to deflne thelr ldentltles by referrlnq to thecharacterlstlcs, real or lmaglned, of neighbourinq societies.In more recent times, as a new nation, Americans began tospeculate on the nature of thelr natlon's ldentlty In thecontext. of rte contlnulnq lnflux of new and lncreasinqlydlverer grcps of ~mmigrants, as well as the rapid expansion ofthe United States ltself - economically, polltlcally, anddemographlcally. Whlle Americans have been Inclined to engage