The aim of this essay has been to show how the object America is constructed in two of the most used history books in Swedish high school. The theoretical framework used in this paper is based on the post-structural discourse analysis as presented by Michel Foucault. More specifically can be said that Foucault´s theories about formation of objects have been used as a tool to show how the image of America is constructed in the books. Later this paper also discuses which subject positioning the studied books take, also this inspired by Foucault´s theories.

The study is presented with long quotes from the studied material to reach a transparency that enables the reader to see which dictums the conclusions are based on. This also makes it easy for the reader to judge whether or not the conclusions are reasonable. Two central themes has been located and focused on: 1) The arrival of the Europeans and their conquest of America and 2) the emancipation from Europe. With its focus on America this essay has been able to reveal that America gets its meaning through the Europeans which due to the theoretical framework means that America doesn´t exist without being contrasted with the European civilization. The essay has also shown that the linguistic category “America” embodies different significance in different parts of the books. At first America is generally described as a continent without history that gets invaded by Europeans and the linguistic category refers to current Latin America. This changes however and later the linguistic category “America” refers to the current United States and gets associated with terms such as freedom.