The study of nations and nationalism is a rich and expansive scholarly field, one in which complex, interdisciplinary debates have emerged about the material processes of nation-building, the basis for national identity, and the dangers posed by xenophobic nationalisms. Yet, rarely has nationalism been paired together with the study of exceptionalism to mine fresh insights about how nationalist narratives are forged. Robert Fatton’s The Guise of Exceptionalism: Unmasking the National Narratives of Haiti and the United States is an innovative contribution to the field of nationalism; comparative politics; and race, ethnicity, and politics. Throughout the book, Fatton skillfully explores the relationship between exceptionalism and nationalism, examining the ways in which exceptionalism is a core feature of nationalist narratives that masks the depravities and crimes of a nation, while embellishing a romanticized narrative of the nation’s founding and persistence.

Although scholars have interrogated nationalist narratives by taking up questions of patriotism; populism; race, gender, and empire; and cultural memory (Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 1983; Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, 1992; Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation, 1997; Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? 2016), there is little research that takes up the connection between exceptionalism and nationalism in a systematic manner, even if the terms are often evoked together. By centering exceptionalism at the heart of nationalist discourse, Fatton is able to powerfully disclose the contradictions of nationalism and expose the differential impact of nationalisms in unifying their citizens and exerting their power internationally.

To this end, one of the key claims of the book is that not all exceptionalisms are the same. The extent to which a narrative of exceptionalism gains any critical purchase in the world is dependent on the structural position of the nation-state and its ruling classes in the international order. Fatton makes this argument with meticulous historical detail, drawing on an impressive range of resources to underscore the distinct expression of Haitian and American exceptionalism. Furthermore, the differences between the two forms of exceptionalism are effectively uncovered by the comparative framing of the book, where Haitian and American nationalisms are juxtaposed and contrasted to reveal sharp and critical insights about the self-representation of each nation. Notably, Haiti and the United States are not simply contrasted as hermetically sealed case studies that have distinct histories of social and political development. Instead, the history of these two nation-states is presented as intertwined, particularly in Chapter 4 (“Manifest Destiny and American Occupation of Haiti”) and Chapter 5 (“The American Occupation and Haiti’s Exceptionalism”). By taking this approach to comparison, Fatton is able to show the ways in which nations often articulate narratives of exceptionalism in relation to each other, where one nation is responding to the threat posed by the other in a larger context of structural inequality. In this case, the United States has overwhelming political clout to further its interests through a narrative of exceptionalism, whereas Haiti’s exceptionalism, which is grounded in resistance to imperialist incursion and racial inequality, has diminished in power over the years. The comparative structure of the book produces tremendous insights about the deployment and relative power of different narratives of exceptionalism.

Despite highlighting these key differences between Haiti and the United States, Fatton is ultimately interested in unmasking the ways in which both exceptionalisms work in a similar fashion to bolster the power of the ruling classes by sanitizing national history. In doing so, he suggests that the discourses of nationalist exceptionalism ultimately marginalize the voices of those who advance ruthless and vociferous criticisms of those in power, and the forms of inequalities they persistently fail to address and remedy. When narratives of exceptionalism become hegemonic, particularly in a nation-state such as the United States, their function is to seduce citizens into a national mythology that represents them as members of an advanced civilization, thereby thwarting a critical orientation toward the national past and present. In Haiti, a nation with much less political power, the narratives of revolution and resistance to racial and imperial domination are used to downplay the persisting racial divisions and economic inequalities, and the authoritarian impulses that were born out of the militaristic legacy of Haitian revolution. Here, the result is the estrangement of the masses from government rather than retreat into the comforts of a self-congratulatory exceptionalism on offer in the United States. Both are dead-end routes that foretell a crisis of nationalist identity.

In writing this book, Fatton offers an alternative orientation to the national past and present. By skillfully unraveling the narratives of exceptionalism that cloak inequality, injustice, and hierarchy and by puncturing holes in received accounts of the heroes and founding fathers of the nation, Fatton lays bare a critical, complex, and sophisticated narrative of the past. This orientation to the past offers a productive alternative to David Scott’s emplotment of the Haitian revolution in Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (2004), which grapples with the question of how a romantic emplotment of the past can obscure the structures of power that constrain the agency of revolutionary figures such as Toussaint Louverture. Both Fatton and Scott seek to veer away from triumphalist narratives of the past grounded in a revolutionary moment that overcomes a structure of oppression, such as enslavement and racial domination. They demonstrate how power and hierarchy get reconsolidated and reproduced through new structures of oppression. Yet, Fatton retains the emancipatory thrust of historical writing in The Guise of Exceptionalism. In the spirit of Marx, he calls for a ruthless criticism of all that exists in order to “discover the new world through the critique of the old” and to ultimately work toward “the construction of the future” (Karl Marx, “Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge,” 1843). Consequently, unlike Scott’s circumspection about the project of founding freedom under modern conditions, it is this spirit of emancipatory criticism directed toward building a freer and more just world that informs Fatton’s book.

Despite these many strengths, The Guise of Exceptionalism could have expanded further on the connection between exceptionalism and nationalism, specifically reflecting on whether exceptionalism is a necessary feature of nationalism. Are there nationalisms that reject the discourse of cultural distinctiveness and universalism embedded in exceptionalism? Or is the cosmopolitanism to which Fatton gestures at the end of the book necessary to forge political communities grounded in human solidarity, equality, and social justice? Fatton is clear about his stance on exceptionalism and the need to work toward a more cosmopolitan future. However, in the interim, a range of transnationalisms and internationalisms has emerged in the postwar era of decolonization, suggesting that nationalism itself is a complex matrix of identification that can take on a number of expressions—including emancipatory forms that are more open, progressive, and less wedded to discourses of exceptionalism. A clearer articulation of the connection between nationalism and exceptionalism would have opened up Fatton’s book to weigh in on these ongoing debates about transnationalism, internationalism, and cosmopolitanism that have emerged in the last two decades. Aside from this absence, The Guise of Exceptionalism offers tremendous resources for thinking in complex terms about a world in which nationalism persistently takes on more dangerous and destructive expressions.