New World Liberalism and Our Ever-Elusive North American Identities

when we understand our histories and identities in terms of the transnational forces that shaped our nationalist frameworks, we discover substantial precedent for north american identities and cultural spaces. during and immediately after the war of 1848, u.s. and mexican liberal nationalists unsuccessfully crafted transnational identities in non-fiction essays and editorials. the historical overlap of mexican and u.s. american new world liberalism, defined as it is by awkward and uneven parallelisms, modifies common assumptions about histories of liberal nationalism and national-identity formation. north american identities have arisen in strategic contexts defined by experiences of double-(un)consciousness, disjunction, fracture, and paradox.