ABSTRACT
Academic discussions about ‘anti-Americanism’ today often imply that this is not a singular but a plural phenomenon, characteristic of the social, political and cultural encounters of our global world. Many types of anti-Americanism – domestic and Western/Islamic; coming from political right and left; intellectual and popular; Cold War and post-Cold War – are employed in order to explain the different and sometimes non-corresponding historical and psychological factors. This typological variety leads to methodological confusions and may result from attempts to apply this popular catchword to any possible sphere of life, region or period. In each debate, a distinctive type of cultural anti-Americanism is at issue. Some researchers talk about justifi ed responses towards global and excessive US cultural proliferation. Others, in turn, argue that the very essence of antiAmericanism and of the deep-seated prejudices against the US (or, more broadly, against modernity and its representations) derive from cultural predispositions that any American action might bring into play.
