{"id":48,"date":"2018-02-10T16:50:54","date_gmt":"2018-02-10T21:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/?p=48"},"modified":"2018-02-10T16:52:03","modified_gmt":"2018-02-10T21:52:03","slug":"week-5-readings-ideology-and-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/2018\/02\/10\/week-5-readings-ideology-and-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 5 Readings Ideology and War"},"content":{"rendered":"

The texts for this week discuss America\u2019s pre-9\/11 longing for an \u201cepic struggle\u201d combined with a World War II nostalgia<\/a> that together laid the groundwork for the militaristic nationalism that has taken over present day society. As a symbolic state, preoccupied with imagery, America\u2019s media and propaganda industries maintain a great deal of power and influence in our society.<\/p>\n

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The article by Althusser provides two theses that analyze concept of an \u201cideology\u201d, laying a backdrop for the overarching theme about America\u2019s military ideology present in the rest of the texts. The first thesis states that while we admit our ideologies represent largely imaginary world outlooks we also admit that these outlooks allude to a true reality that is reflected in the ideologies. The second thesis states that while ideologies are in some ways \u201cimaginary\u201d, they are representations of the real world that do exist through physical practices and material items which we see in our culture. This analysis of the term ideology confused me at first but as I read through the other articles it began to make more sense. I saw it relating to the myths surrounding America\u2019s role in violent wars and in how our media has created false ideas of terrorism as a means to continue our military ideology.<\/p>\n

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Ivie\u2019s piece \u201cMaking War Difficult\u201d begins by discussing how America fell under the spell of militarism by romanticizing soldiers and fostering a nostalgia for military ideals, which has caused our national identity to become centered on an idea of military supremacy. He argues that the media and war\/terrorist propaganda have played a central role in \u201cmaking war easy\u201d by manufacturing the constant presence of an enemy and dehumanizing the enemy<\/a> in a way that is an abuse of evil. \u00a0This abuse of evil leads to continued false rationalizations about war and can only be stopped, Ivie says, through countering the dehumanizing propaganda with \u201chumanizing, peacebuilding discourses of identification\u201d.<\/p>\n

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The online link by Hayes and Dawson provides comic book-like visuals for the written text of the other Hayes article titled \u201cGood War on Terror\u201d. These two texts present a theory about how our country came into this, as they call it, \u201cstrange brew of nationalism\u201d that takes center stage post 9\/11. They contend that it’s not what happened after the 9\/11 attacks but what preceded them that evolved into our country\u2019s militarism mindset. They describe Americans as longing for something \u201cmore noble\u201d than the petty politics<\/a> and feeling empty without an overarching enemy for the first time in decades. These factors inclined society to look back in time with a nostalgic lens to find America\u2019s greater national purpose. The authors specifically point to popular media and books from the late 90s such as Saving Private Ryan<\/em> and The Greatest Generation<\/em><\/a> as representations of the country\u2019s continued obsession with WWII and the generation that fought in it.<\/p>\n

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I found Hayes\u2019 analysis of Saving Private Ryan<\/em> to be particularly interesting as it countered the mainstream focus on the unprecedented realism of the war scenes by instead looking at the overall meaning of the movie, which Hayes argues revolves around Cpl. Timothy Upham. The message behind the character of Upham shows the audience that in struggle for freedom, intellectuals are weak and that only true soldiers can win the war. This narrative added to the ethos of the \u201cCult of the Soldier\u201d which Hayes states came to dominate politics in years to come.<\/p>\n

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The Biesecker article also speaks about Saving Private Ryan<\/em> and The Greatest Generation<\/em> as well as two other \u201cmemory texts\u201d, the World War II Memorial and the Women in Military Service for America Memorial. She argues that these reconstructions of the past act as civic lessons about the US identity and that societies often reconstruct the past rather than record it truthfully. This reconstruction occurs with the needs of the current culture in mind therefore often an ideologized past is used a means of molding the present. Her discussion of Saving Private Ryan<\/em> takes a different route from Hayes\u2019s article as it speaks about the idea of the \u201cwhite male body in pain\u201d which is exemplified in the famous opening scene<\/a>, which recreates the U.S invasion of Normandy. I found her analysis of The Greatest Generation <\/em>as a handbook for how to create a society schooled in the three classical American virtues: self-reliance, self-discipline, and self sacrifice to be particularly insightful as well as her theory about the positioning of the WWII memorial at the center of the Capitol as a representation of the ideological role it plays in the present US culture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All together these texts provided me with new insights about how our country\u2019s nostalgia contributed to our present position in the global world and how our attitudes about war and terrorism have been constructed overtime through the media and materialized versions of our American ideology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The texts for this week discuss America\u2019s pre-9\/11 longing for an \u201cepic struggle\u201d combined with a World War II nostalgia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2743,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2743"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/rhetoric-terrorism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}