> But we still haven't got past the American imperium;
The markets of economic, symbolic and cultural capital run on different clocks. Yes, the US is a First World culture, and its elites think of US power as being absolute. Economically, though, the US Empire ended in 1985 and has to borrow money from other, more efficient capitalisms. Politically, the EU is pursuing a very different course from Wall Street neoliberalism, for a variety of interesting reasons (20th century electoral systems, strong unions, etc.), while East Asia's developmental states remain mighty indeed.
One of the great insights of Adorno's notion of the total system is that consciousness is so molded by social processes that no single mediation can possibly be what it appears to be (or advertises itself as being). I suspect the mythological bane or baleful spell of unquestioned US hegemony is something like a reaction-formation to our lack of multinational narratives capable of describing multinational capitalism for what it is -- a transnational reality.
-- Dennis