A new way to "interrogate the project of military history" . . .
Let's revisit, say,
Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War
Here are 5 means by which you might destabilize, decenter, deconstruct, or otherwise devalue that book:
1.
Identity and Community in The American Way of War: Russell F. Weigley Defamiliarizing Materialist Mythos
2.
Russell F. Weigley Alienating Representation: The American Way of War and the (Author)ity of Breath
3.
Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War, and The Invader: Visioning Savage Darkness
4.
Encoding, Challenging, Transforming: Darkness in Russell F. Weigley and the Theoretical Politics of Seduction in The American Way of War
5.
Pathologizing the Objectified Tyranny in Russell F. Weigley: The American Way of War and Fragmentation
Blog Them Out of the Stone Age: Toward A Broader Vision of Military History and National Security Affairs
4 comments:
I am not so sure that slinging academic jargon terms for their own sake really does any good. That we should "eschew obfuscation" sounds more impressive than "write clearly", but which is easier to understand? Yes, I know there are some cases where jargon can be useful to use 1 word to save 10. In which case it is fine. But not when you use 10 words of jargon to avoid 1 word of plain english. My spouse teaches cultural studies and new media work. With shelves full of "-isms", "post-isms" and the like. Going through some of those texts feels like it requires 4 days to understand one page which you can often then summarize in 3 simple sentences after you weed throught the prose with a machete. That is one think I like about history. It is told clearly. I would hate to see history texts go down the path of some other disciplines.
Anyway, that is just my 2 cents.
Jaron :)
The PoMo English Title Generator is a joke,, intended to poke fun at the very obscurantism--er, murky, would-be clever language--you deplore. Hit the link and check it out!
Er, my bad. That generator is just hilarious. About a month ago I walked through the English department halls on an unrelated matter and i'll be damned if some of those prose thickets intended here as a joke weren't there, for books written 200 ago, no less.
Jaron
I'll see your Weigley and raise you one Barnett. Check this out:
Ethos and Homosociality in The Pentegon's New Map: Thomas Barnett Demarking Unitary Mythos
Heteronormative Madness and the Spirit of Colonial Murder in Thomas Barnett's The Pentegon's New Map
Dismembering Corporeality: Phallic Textuality in Thomas Barnett's The Pentegon's New Map
Merging Assimilation: Emergent Fuzziness in Thomas Barnett's The Pentegon's New Map
Thomas Barnett, The Pentegon's New Map, and The Proletariat: Mourning Dialogic Autobiography
W. M. Beasley
wmbeasle@olemiss.edu
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