American insecurities and the ontopolitics of US pharmacotic wars

The Geopolitics of American Insecurity: Terror, Power and Foreign Policy

Volumn , Issue , 2008, Pages 34-53

  George, Larry N ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84919527062     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203884218     Document Type: Chapter

References (105)

1. See Rey Chow, The Age of the World Target (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
2. In a different register, see Stephen Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: Norton, 2005).
3. See George W. Bush, "The National Security Strategy of the United States," (Washington, DC: White House, 2002);
4. Charles Glaser and Steve Fetter, "Counterforce Revisited: Assessing the Nuclear Posture Review's New Missions," International Security Vol. 30, No. 2 (2005), pp. 84-126;
5. James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey Larsen (eds.), Nuclear Transformation: The New U.S. Nuclear Doctrine (New York: Palgrave, 2005);
6. Keir A. Lieber and Daryl Press, "The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy," International Security Vol. 30, No. 4 (2006), pp. 7-44;
7. Jeffrey Lantis et al., "Correspondence: The Short Shadow of U.S. Primacy," International Security Vol. 31, No. 3 (2007), pp. 174-93.
8. A superficial sampling of works that address the sacrificial dimensions of politics would include: Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) and Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New York: Zone, 2005);
9. Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-39 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985) and The Accursed Share, Vol. III (New York: Zone, 1991);
10. René Caillois, Man and the Sacred (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001);
11. William Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995);
12. Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981);
13. Paul Dumouchel (ed.), Violence and Truth: On the Work of René Girard (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988);
14. Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War (New York: Holt, 1997);
15. Bracha L. Ettinger, The Matrixial Borderspace (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006);
16. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), The Scapegoat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987);
17. Chris Hedges, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (New York: Anchor Books, 2003);
18. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982);
19. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Typography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998);
20. Bruce Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991);
21. Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003);
22. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991);
23. Andrew Norris (ed), Politics, Metaphysics and Death (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005);
24. Ivan Strenski, Contesting Sacrifice: Religion, Nationalism, and Social Thought in France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
25. See Terence McKenna, Violence and Difference: Girard, Derrida, and Deconstruction (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 5.
26. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987), p. 10.
27. See Peter Gourevitch, "The Second Image Reversed," International Organization, Vol. 32, No. 4. (1978), pp. 881-912.
28. See the excellent collection of essays by Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber, Violence, Identity and Self-Determination (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).
29. The pivotal treatment of this theme is G. W. F. Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1991), (§321-40).
30. For a superb commentary on these passages, see Michael Shapiro, Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), Chapter 2.
31. On this topic, see also R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
32. James Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (London: Blackwell, 1991);
33. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), especially Chapter 3;
34. David Campbell and Michael Dillon, The Political Subject of Violence (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).
35. For an illuminating exchange, compare Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)
36. Gopal Balakrishnan, "The Role of Force in History," New Left Review (Sept.-Oct. 2007), pp. 23-56.
37. See Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship (London: Verso, 2005);
38. R. Brian Ferguson, The State, Identity, and Violence (London: Routledge, 2002).
39. See Wendy Brown's brilliant genealogy of the resulting paradox of the prerogative of masculinist states in Manhood and Politics (Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988), Chapter 7.
40. See also Wendy Brown, States of Injury (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 186-96;
41. Cynthia Enloe, Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).
42. See Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002);
43. Michael Kulikowski, Rome's Gothic Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
44. Andrew Gilett, "Ethnogenesis: A Contested Model of Early Modern Europe" History Compass Vol. 4, No. 2 (2006), p. 245.
45. Jan Bremmer, "The Scapegoat between Northern Syria, Hittites, Greeks, Israelites and Christians" (Unpublished manuscript, 2007).
46. See also Gunnar Heinsohn, "The Rise of Blood Sacrifice and Priest-Kingship in Mesopotamia," Religion Vol. 22 (1992), pp. 109-34.
47. See Gilett, "Ethnogenesis," p. 246;
48. Jan Bremmer, "Scapegoat Rituals in Ancient Greece," in ed. Richard Buxton, Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 271-93;
49. Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley: University of California, 1979), pp. 59-77;
50. Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly, Violent Origins: Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987);
51. Georges Dumézil, Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations (New York: Zone, 1988);
52. Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice; Pierre Bonnechère, Le sacrifice humain en Grèce ancienne (Athens: Kernos, 1994);
53. James M. Deem, Bodies from the Bog (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998);
54. Eammon P. Kelly, Kingship and Sacrifice: Iron Age Bog Bodies and Boundaries (Bray, Ireland: Archeology Ireland, 2006).
55. See Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (New York: Zone, 1988);
56. Sara Forsdyke, Exile, Ostracism, and Democracy: The Politics of Expulsion in Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005);
57. Robert Parker, Miasma (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 257-80.
58. See Bremmer, "The Scapegoat between," p. 21.
59. Victor Davis Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (New York: Knopf, 1989).
60. See also Hanson, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (New York: Doubleday, 2001).
61. For critical perspectives on Hanson's thesis, see John Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2004);
62. Hans van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities (London: Duckworth, 2004).
63. These and related issues will be taken up in Larry N. George, Pharmacotic War: Sacrificial Violence and the Future of American Power (in progress).
64. See Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979); The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1980); and "Society Must Be Defended" (New York: Picador, 2003). The concept of pharmacotic war also addresses the important theoretical tension between Foucault and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari over the relation between war and politics.
65. On this topic, see Julian Reid, "Deleuze's War Machine: Nomadism Against the State," Millennium Vol. 32, No. 1 (2003), pp. 57-85.
66. See William Connolly, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002);
67. Andrew Schmookler, Out of Weakness: Healing the Wounds that Drive us to War (New York: Bantam, 1988);
68. Lawrence LeShan, The Psychology of War (New York: Helios, 2002);
69. Jerry S. Piven et al., Terror and Apocalypse: Psychological Undercurrents of History, Volume II (Lincoln: Writer's Showcase, 2002).
70. See Ehrenreich, Blood Rites; Hent de Vries, Religion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to Derrida (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002);
71. Mark Pizzato, Theatres of Human Sacrifice: From Ancient Ritual to Screen Violence (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005);
72. Michael Welch, Scapegoats of September 11th (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006);
73. Bruce Lincoln, Religion, Empire & Torture: The Case of Achaemenian Persia, with a Postscript on Abu Ghraib (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
74. On this topic, see Barbara Jeanne Fields, "Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America," New Left Review No. 181 (1990), pp. 95-118;
75. W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1995);
76. Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004);
77. Joel Olson, The Abolition of White Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004);
78. Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (New York: Free Press, 2006);
79. Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2006);
80. Thomas Schaller, Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win without the South (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006).
81. Patriotic American historians often have been quite unapologetic about this history. See, for example, Richard Maxwell Brown, No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991);
82. Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture and Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think (New York: Doubleday, 2003);
83. James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (New York: Broadway, 2005);
84. Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: American Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage, 2006).
85. The most impressive history of this mythopoeisis is still Richard Slotkin's trilogy: Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973);
86. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (New York: Harper Collins, 1985);
87. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America(New York: Harper, 1993).
88. See also Campbell, Writing Security;
89. Michael Bellesiles, Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History (New York: NYU Press, 1999);
90. Christopher Waldrep and Michael Bellesiles, Documenting American Violence: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
91. Anthony David Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p. 150.
92. On southern white ontopolitical culture and the violence associated with it, see Fox Butterfield, All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence (New York: Harper, 2002);
93. Elliot Jaspin, Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America (New York: Basic Books, 2006);
94. Jonathan Markovitz, Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006);
95. John Moore, Carnival of Blood: Dueling, Lynching, and Murder in South Carolina, 1880-1920 (Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006);
96. Webb, Born Fighting.
97. Phillips, American Theocracy, p. 133.
98. See Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Owl Books, 2005).
99. See, in particular, Mark E. Neely, The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007);
100. Drew Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2008);
101. Adam Gopnik, "In the Mourning Store: Burying the Civil War Dead," The New Yorker, January 21, 2008, pp. 77-81;
102. Mark Schantz, Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America's Culture of Death (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).
103. See "Fighting in Panama: The President; Excerpts from Bush's News Conference on Central America," New York Times, December 22, 1989, p. A16.
104. A good illustration of this is Jerry Falwell's pro-Iraq War sermon of January 31, 2004, which, predictably, nowhere quotes Jesus himself. Instead, it references "the full revelation concerning Jesus pictured in the book of Revelation 19, where He is depicted bearing a 'sharp sword' and smiting nations, ruling them with 'a rod of iron'." See Jerry Falwell, "God is Pro-War," available at www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?Article_ID=36859.
105. See Mary Ann Ankers, "Honest, It Wasn't Abe's Comment," The Washington Post, February 16, 2007, p. A21.