| The legacy of American Puritanism continues to haunt contemporary U.S. socioeconomic, racial, technological and cultural realities through the deployment of rhetorical tropes, continually transforming but always orbiting around specifically Americanized themes that align hard work, economic success, leisure, material consumption, personhood, belonging, recognition, literacy, and citizenship; moreover, these rhetorical tropes, which can be found in the cultural vehicles of literary fiction, film, websites, online techno-texts, and video games, influence individuals toward belief systems that favor hierarchical, patriarchal, propertied, "non-raced" normatives of inclusivity within the national framework. Because of this, non-normative individuals construct methods for inclusion, tactically assimilating fragments of selfhood and identity in order to share in a portion of the public promise of the United States. |
