Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror

ISBN-13: 9780976147596 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 50 str.

Bruce Holsinger

Opis

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."