Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism and the War on Terror - Softcover

Holsinger, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0976147599 ISBN 13: 9780976147596

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2007

Synopsis

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About this title

Synopsis:

President Bush was roundly criticized for likening America's antiterrorism measures to a "crusade" in 2001. Far from just a gaffe, however, such medievalism has become a dominant paradigm for comprehending the identity and motivations of America's perceived enemy in the war on terror. Yet as Bruce Holsinger argues here, this cloying post-9/11 rhetoric has served to obscure the more intricate ideological machinations of neomedievalism, the global idiom of the non-state actor: non-governmental organizations, transnational corporate militias, and terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda. "Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror" addresses the role of neomedievalism in contemporary politics. While international-relations theorists promote neomedievalism as a model for understanding emergent modes of global sovereignty, neoconservatives exploit its conceptual slipperiness for their own tactical ends. Holsinger concludes with a careful parsing of the Bush administration's torture memos, which enlist neomedievalism's model of feudal sovereignty on behalf of the abrogation of human rights.

About the Author:

Bruce Holsinger is professor of English and music at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture and The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0976147599
• ISBN 13: 9780976147596
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 50