I would like to thank the video-maker Sandy Amerio for her stimulating work on storytelling; Anne Berger, Professor of French Literature at Cornell University; Philip Lewis, former Dean at Cornell, and Catherine Porter, the American translator of “French Theory,” for their inspiration and hospitality during my stay in Ithaca in 2001, which is when the idea for this book was born; Jean Baudrillard for his encouragement and the interest he took in my research; Fernando Bernado, University of Coimbra, at whose seminar I first presented my research.
My thanks are due to François Gèze, président-directeur général of Editions La Découverte for his help in composing and writing this book and for being much more than an editor; to Marie-José Monday, who allowed me to talk about its themes more than once in her seminar. I am also grateful to her for her openness, her support, and the stimulating nature of our many exchanges.
I would also like to thanks Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Director of the Centre des recherches sur les arts et le langage, and Philippe Roussin, who heads the “Textes et littératures” research team, for welcoming me into his team and its laboratory at the CNRS. I could not be more grateful to Paul Virilio for his longstanding friendship and trust.
My thanks go, finally, to Emmanuelle Zoll, who drew my attention to many aspects of American culture and cultural globalization, such as the phenomena of acculturation in Bombay’s call centers, and who was present throughout the writing of this book.