Abstract
[...]recovery, reclaiming, redefining in American Studies and elsewhere is something we are now comfortable with—even reliant upon (Jonathan Culler wrote recently that “the motif of return” dominated the essay he included in the October 2010 special issue of PMLA on “Literary Criticism for the Twenty-first Century” [908]), whether or not the product of that discovery is worth speaking to or being haunted by. Curators regularly throw out reels of disintegrating films to keep them from liquefying and incinerating the rest” (189). [...]film, like the sets used to create the images on it, which itself, always, eventually, must be thrown out, becomes a trope for the book, for Hollywood, and for this portion, at least, of American commerce and culture. [...]Afterword: the Prison and the Pentagon” considers Alcatraz Prison, a dumping ground for prisoners and later redeemed as a tourist site, next to the Pentagon.