Worlding the Western: Contemporary US Western Fiction and the Global Community

Worlding the Western views the fiction of the Western United States as a focal point for a re-examination of the consequences of the exceptionalism and closed borders of the Trump Era.

At a time of bounded individualism, new nativism, climate emergency, and migration crises, author Neil Campbell argues that fiction offers opportunities to challenge the dark side of globalization.

He proposes worlding as a different and more open form of politics.

Diversity, disparity, and opposition are central to the dynamic frictional fiction considered in this book.

The American West provides a powerful test case in which these features are present and yet, historically, have often been masked or denied in the rush toward unanimity and nation-building.

Worlding is, therefore, a positive, critical concept through which to view the notion of a single world under pressure.