Security and Suspicion

Security and Suspicion

Author: Juliana Ochs

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-06-06

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0812205685

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In Israel, gates, fences, and walls encircle public spaces while guards scrutinize, inspect, and interrogate. With a population constantly aware of the possibility of suicide bombings, Israel is defined by its culture of security. Security and Suspicion is a closely drawn ethnographic study of the way Israeli Jews experience security in their everyday lives. Observing security concerns through an anthropological lens, Juliana Ochs investigates the relationship between perceptions of danger and the political strategies of the state. Ochs argues that everyday security practices create exceptional states of civilian alertness that perpetuate—rather than mitigate—national fear and ongoing violence. In Israeli cities, customers entering gated urban cafés open their handbags for armed security guards and parents circumnavigate feared neighborhoods to deliver their children safely to school. Suspicious objects appear to be everywhere, as Israelis internalize the state's vigilance for signs of potential suicide bombers. Fear and suspicion not only permeate political rhetoric, writes Ochs, but also condition how people see, the way they move, and the way they relate to Palestinians. Ochs reveals that in Israel everyday practices of security—in the home, on commutes to work, or in cafés and restaurants—are as much a part of conflict as soldiers and military checkpoints. Based on intensive fieldwork in Israel during the second intifada, Security and Suspicion charts a new approach to issues of security while contributing to our appreciation of the subtle dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This book offers a way to understand why security propagates the very fears and suspicions it is supposed to reduce.


Book Synopsis Security and Suspicion by : Juliana Ochs

Download or read book Security and Suspicion written by Juliana Ochs and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Israel, gates, fences, and walls encircle public spaces while guards scrutinize, inspect, and interrogate. With a population constantly aware of the possibility of suicide bombings, Israel is defined by its culture of security. Security and Suspicion is a closely drawn ethnographic study of the way Israeli Jews experience security in their everyday lives. Observing security concerns through an anthropological lens, Juliana Ochs investigates the relationship between perceptions of danger and the political strategies of the state. Ochs argues that everyday security practices create exceptional states of civilian alertness that perpetuate—rather than mitigate—national fear and ongoing violence. In Israeli cities, customers entering gated urban cafés open their handbags for armed security guards and parents circumnavigate feared neighborhoods to deliver their children safely to school. Suspicious objects appear to be everywhere, as Israelis internalize the state's vigilance for signs of potential suicide bombers. Fear and suspicion not only permeate political rhetoric, writes Ochs, but also condition how people see, the way they move, and the way they relate to Palestinians. Ochs reveals that in Israel everyday practices of security—in the home, on commutes to work, or in cafés and restaurants—are as much a part of conflict as soldiers and military checkpoints. Based on intensive fieldwork in Israel during the second intifada, Security and Suspicion charts a new approach to issues of security while contributing to our appreciation of the subtle dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This book offers a way to understand why security propagates the very fears and suspicions it is supposed to reduce.


Police Encounters

Police Encounters

Author: Ilana Feldman

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2015-05-13

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0804795371

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Egypt came to govern Gaza as a result of a war, a failed effort to maintain Arab Palestine. Throughout the twenty years of its administration (1948–1967), Egyptian policing of Gaza concerned itself not only with crime and politics, but also with control of social and moral order. Through surveillance, interrogation, and a network of local informants, the police extended their reach across the public domain and into private life, seeing Palestinians as both security threats and vulnerable subjects who needed protection. Security practices produced suspicion and safety simultaneously. Police Encounters explores the paradox of Egyptian rule. Drawing on a rich and detailed archive of daily police records, the book describes an extensive security apparatus guided by intersecting concerns about national interest, social propriety, and everyday illegality. In pursuit of security, Egyptian policing established a relatively safe society, but also one that blocked independent political activity. The repressive aspects of the security society that developed in Gaza under Egyptian rule are beyond dispute. But repression does not tell the entire story about its impact on Gaza. Policing also provided opportunities for people to make claims of government, influence their neighbors, and protect their families.


Book Synopsis Police Encounters by : Ilana Feldman

Download or read book Police Encounters written by Ilana Feldman and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-13 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Egypt came to govern Gaza as a result of a war, a failed effort to maintain Arab Palestine. Throughout the twenty years of its administration (1948–1967), Egyptian policing of Gaza concerned itself not only with crime and politics, but also with control of social and moral order. Through surveillance, interrogation, and a network of local informants, the police extended their reach across the public domain and into private life, seeing Palestinians as both security threats and vulnerable subjects who needed protection. Security practices produced suspicion and safety simultaneously. Police Encounters explores the paradox of Egyptian rule. Drawing on a rich and detailed archive of daily police records, the book describes an extensive security apparatus guided by intersecting concerns about national interest, social propriety, and everyday illegality. In pursuit of security, Egyptian policing established a relatively safe society, but also one that blocked independent political activity. The repressive aspects of the security society that developed in Gaza under Egyptian rule are beyond dispute. But repression does not tell the entire story about its impact on Gaza. Policing also provided opportunities for people to make claims of government, influence their neighbors, and protect their families.


Security Unbound

Security Unbound

Author: Jef Huysmans

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-09

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1317813081

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Security concerns have mushroomed. Increasingly numerous areas of life are governed by security policies and technologies. Security Unbound argues that when insecurities pervade how we relate to our neighbours, how we perceive international politics, how governments formulate policies, at stake is not our security but our democracy. Security is not in the first instance a right or value but a practice that challenges democratic institutions and actions. We are familiar with emergency policies in the name of national security challenging parliamentary processes, the space for political dissent, and fundamental rights. Yet, security practice and technology pervade society heavily in very mundane ways without raising national security crises, in particular through surveillance technology and the management of risks and uncertainties in many areas of life. These more diffuse security practices create societies in which suspicion becomes a default way of relating and governing relations, ranging from neighbourhood relations over financial transactions to cross border mobility. Security Unbound demonstrates that governing through suspicion poses serious challenges to democratic practice. Some of these challenges are familiar, such as the erosion of the right to privacy; others are less so, such as the post-human challenge to citizenship. Security unbound provokes us to see that the democratic political stake today is not our security but preventing insecurity from becoming the organising principle of political and social life.


Book Synopsis Security Unbound by : Jef Huysmans

Download or read book Security Unbound written by Jef Huysmans and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-09 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Security concerns have mushroomed. Increasingly numerous areas of life are governed by security policies and technologies. Security Unbound argues that when insecurities pervade how we relate to our neighbours, how we perceive international politics, how governments formulate policies, at stake is not our security but our democracy. Security is not in the first instance a right or value but a practice that challenges democratic institutions and actions. We are familiar with emergency policies in the name of national security challenging parliamentary processes, the space for political dissent, and fundamental rights. Yet, security practice and technology pervade society heavily in very mundane ways without raising national security crises, in particular through surveillance technology and the management of risks and uncertainties in many areas of life. These more diffuse security practices create societies in which suspicion becomes a default way of relating and governing relations, ranging from neighbourhood relations over financial transactions to cross border mobility. Security Unbound demonstrates that governing through suspicion poses serious challenges to democratic practice. Some of these challenges are familiar, such as the erosion of the right to privacy; others are less so, such as the post-human challenge to citizenship. Security unbound provokes us to see that the democratic political stake today is not our security but preventing insecurity from becoming the organising principle of political and social life.


National Security Intelligence

National Security Intelligence

Author: Loch K. Johnson

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0745649394

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National security intelligence is a vast, complicated, and important topic, made doubly hard for citizens to understand because of the thick veils of secrecy that surround it. This definitive introduction to the field guides readers skillfully through this hidden side of government. It not only explains the three primary missions of intelligence – information collection and analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action – it also explores the wider dilemmas posed by the existence of secret government organizations in 'open' societies. With over thirty-five years of experience studying intelligence agencies and their activities, Loch Johnson illuminates difficult questions such as why intelligence organizations make mistakes in assessing world events; why some intelligence officers decide to work against their own country on behalf of foreign regimes; and how agencies succumb to scandals, including spying on the very citizens they are meant to protect. National Security Intelligence is tailor-made to meet the interests of students and general readers who care about how nations protect themselves against threats through the establishment of intelligence organizations - and how they continue to strive for safeguards to prevent the misuse of this secret power.


Book Synopsis National Security Intelligence by : Loch K. Johnson

Download or read book National Security Intelligence written by Loch K. Johnson and published by Polity. This book was released on 2012 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National security intelligence is a vast, complicated, and important topic, made doubly hard for citizens to understand because of the thick veils of secrecy that surround it. This definitive introduction to the field guides readers skillfully through this hidden side of government. It not only explains the three primary missions of intelligence – information collection and analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action – it also explores the wider dilemmas posed by the existence of secret government organizations in 'open' societies. With over thirty-five years of experience studying intelligence agencies and their activities, Loch Johnson illuminates difficult questions such as why intelligence organizations make mistakes in assessing world events; why some intelligence officers decide to work against their own country on behalf of foreign regimes; and how agencies succumb to scandals, including spying on the very citizens they are meant to protect. National Security Intelligence is tailor-made to meet the interests of students and general readers who care about how nations protect themselves against threats through the establishment of intelligence organizations - and how they continue to strive for safeguards to prevent the misuse of this secret power.


Suspicion and Faith

Suspicion and Faith

Author: Merold Westphal

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13:

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Are there legitimate uses for atheists' critiques of religion? Westphal says yes, if we take a closer look not at the atheists' arguments against the existence of God, but at their observations about the sometimes disreputable functions of religious practice and belief, as demonstrated in the "atheism of suspicion", put forth by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche.


Book Synopsis Suspicion and Faith by : Merold Westphal

Download or read book Suspicion and Faith written by Merold Westphal and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are there legitimate uses for atheists' critiques of religion? Westphal says yes, if we take a closer look not at the atheists' arguments against the existence of God, but at their observations about the sometimes disreputable functions of religious practice and belief, as demonstrated in the "atheism of suspicion", put forth by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche.


Technologies of Suspicion and the Ethics of Obligation in Political Asylum

Technologies of Suspicion and the Ethics of Obligation in Political Asylum

Author: Bridget M. Haas

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2019-03-11

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0821446673

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Across the globe, migration has been met with intensifying modes of criminalization and securitization, and claims for political asylum are increasingly met with suspicion. Asylum seekers have become the focus of global debates surrounding humanitarian obligations, on the one hand, and concerns surrounding national security and border control, on the other. In Technologies of Suspicion and the Ethics of Obligation in Political Asylum, contributors provide fine-tuned analyses of political asylum systems and the adjudication of asylum claims across a range of sociocultural and geopolitical contexts. The contributors to this timely volume, drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives, offer critical insights into the processes by which tensions between humanitarianism and security are negotiated at the local level, often with negative consequences for asylum seekers. By investigating how a politics of suspicion within asylum systems is enacted in everyday practices and interactions, the authors illustrate how asylum seekers are often produced as suspicious subjects by the very systems to which they appeal for protection. Contributors: Ilil Benjamin, Carol Bohmer, Nadia El-Shaarawi, Bridget M. Haas, John Beard Haviland, Marco Jacquemet, Benjamin N. Lawrance, Rachel Lewis, Sara McKinnon, Amy Shuman, Charles Watters


Book Synopsis Technologies of Suspicion and the Ethics of Obligation in Political Asylum by : Bridget M. Haas

Download or read book Technologies of Suspicion and the Ethics of Obligation in Political Asylum written by Bridget M. Haas and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-11 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the globe, migration has been met with intensifying modes of criminalization and securitization, and claims for political asylum are increasingly met with suspicion. Asylum seekers have become the focus of global debates surrounding humanitarian obligations, on the one hand, and concerns surrounding national security and border control, on the other. In Technologies of Suspicion and the Ethics of Obligation in Political Asylum, contributors provide fine-tuned analyses of political asylum systems and the adjudication of asylum claims across a range of sociocultural and geopolitical contexts. The contributors to this timely volume, drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives, offer critical insights into the processes by which tensions between humanitarianism and security are negotiated at the local level, often with negative consequences for asylum seekers. By investigating how a politics of suspicion within asylum systems is enacted in everyday practices and interactions, the authors illustrate how asylum seekers are often produced as suspicious subjects by the very systems to which they appeal for protection. Contributors: Ilil Benjamin, Carol Bohmer, Nadia El-Shaarawi, Bridget M. Haas, John Beard Haviland, Marco Jacquemet, Benjamin N. Lawrance, Rachel Lewis, Sara McKinnon, Amy Shuman, Charles Watters


Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion

Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion

Author: Alison Scott-Baumann

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2011-11-03

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1441179380

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Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was one of the most prolific and influential French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. In his enormous corpus of work he engaged with literature, history, historiography, politics, theology and ethics, while debating 'truth' and ethical solutions to life in the face of widespread and growing suspicion about whether such a search is either possible or worthwhile. In Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion, Alison Scott-Baumann takes a thematic approach that explores Ricoeur's lifelong struggle to be both iconoclastic and yet hopeful, and avoid the slippery slope to relativism. Through an examination of the 'hermeneutics of suspicion', the book reveals strong continuities throughout his work, as well as significant discontinuities, such as the marked way in which he later distanced himself from the 'hermeneutics of suspicion' and his development of new devices in its place, while seeking a hermeneutics of recovery. Scott-Baumann offers a highly original analysis of the hermeneutics of suspicion that will be useful to the fields of philosophy, literature, theology and postmodern social theory.


Book Synopsis Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion by : Alison Scott-Baumann

Download or read book Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion written by Alison Scott-Baumann and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-11-03 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was one of the most prolific and influential French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. In his enormous corpus of work he engaged with literature, history, historiography, politics, theology and ethics, while debating 'truth' and ethical solutions to life in the face of widespread and growing suspicion about whether such a search is either possible or worthwhile. In Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion, Alison Scott-Baumann takes a thematic approach that explores Ricoeur's lifelong struggle to be both iconoclastic and yet hopeful, and avoid the slippery slope to relativism. Through an examination of the 'hermeneutics of suspicion', the book reveals strong continuities throughout his work, as well as significant discontinuities, such as the marked way in which he later distanced himself from the 'hermeneutics of suspicion' and his development of new devices in its place, while seeking a hermeneutics of recovery. Scott-Baumann offers a highly original analysis of the hermeneutics of suspicion that will be useful to the fields of philosophy, literature, theology and postmodern social theory.


Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age

Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2007-06-28

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 0309134005

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Privacy is a growing concern in the United States and around the world. The spread of the Internet and the seemingly boundaryless options for collecting, saving, sharing, and comparing information trigger consumer worries. Online practices of business and government agencies may present new ways to compromise privacy, and e-commerce and technologies that make a wide range of personal information available to anyone with a Web browser only begin to hint at the possibilities for inappropriate or unwarranted intrusion into our personal lives. Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age presents a comprehensive and multidisciplinary examination of privacy in the information age. It explores such important concepts as how the threats to privacy evolving, how can privacy be protected and how society can balance the interests of individuals, businesses and government in ways that promote privacy reasonably and effectively? This book seeks to raise awareness of the web of connectedness among the actions one takes and the privacy policies that are enacted, and provides a variety of tools and concepts with which debates over privacy can be more fruitfully engaged. Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age focuses on three major components affecting notions, perceptions, and expectations of privacy: technological change, societal shifts, and circumstantial discontinuities. This book will be of special interest to anyone interested in understanding why privacy issues are often so intractable.


Book Synopsis Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age by : National Research Council

Download or read book Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2007-06-28 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Privacy is a growing concern in the United States and around the world. The spread of the Internet and the seemingly boundaryless options for collecting, saving, sharing, and comparing information trigger consumer worries. Online practices of business and government agencies may present new ways to compromise privacy, and e-commerce and technologies that make a wide range of personal information available to anyone with a Web browser only begin to hint at the possibilities for inappropriate or unwarranted intrusion into our personal lives. Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age presents a comprehensive and multidisciplinary examination of privacy in the information age. It explores such important concepts as how the threats to privacy evolving, how can privacy be protected and how society can balance the interests of individuals, businesses and government in ways that promote privacy reasonably and effectively? This book seeks to raise awareness of the web of connectedness among the actions one takes and the privacy policies that are enacted, and provides a variety of tools and concepts with which debates over privacy can be more fruitfully engaged. Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age focuses on three major components affecting notions, perceptions, and expectations of privacy: technological change, societal shifts, and circumstantial discontinuities. This book will be of special interest to anyone interested in understanding why privacy issues are often so intractable.


Above Suspicion

Above Suspicion

Author: Lynda La Plante

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-10-30

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1847395090

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The first instalment in the bestselling Anna Travis series from the BAFTA-winning writer Lynda La Plante, author of Widows, now a major motion picture Young Anna Travis has been assigned to her first murder case - a series of killings that has shocked even the most hardened of detectives. They started eight years ago - now the body count is up to six. The method of killing is identical, the backgrounds of the girls identical - all drug-users and prostitutes. Then a seventh body is found. The modus operandi is the same - but the victim is a young student with the 'face of an angel'. The profile of the murderer has changed dramatically. Determined to earn the respect of her male colleagues, Anna stumbles on a vital piece of information which links one man to the killings, a much-loved actor on the brink of international stardom. His arrest would create a media frenzy. But if he were foundinnocent, his wouldn't be the only career over - Anna's hard fought for reputation would be destroyed once and for all … 'Lynda La Plante practically invented the thriller. Above Suspicion blew me away - it grabs you and doesn't let go until the last page' KARIN SLAUGHTER 'La Plante is building up an interesting body of writing that is underrated… Anna proves a resourceful and believable heroine and heralds the launch of a major new character' GUARDIAN 'The prime suspect here is an adored actor, poised to hit the big time. Could he really be behind a string of grisly murders? It's up to Anna Travis, La Plante's gutsy new heroine, to find out' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Like Jane Tennison, Anna Travis has to work a world which is still rampantly chauvinistic… it is a novel to read about the complexity of relationships, as well as for its compelling plot' DAILY EXPRESS


Book Synopsis Above Suspicion by : Lynda La Plante

Download or read book Above Suspicion written by Lynda La Plante and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-10-30 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first instalment in the bestselling Anna Travis series from the BAFTA-winning writer Lynda La Plante, author of Widows, now a major motion picture Young Anna Travis has been assigned to her first murder case - a series of killings that has shocked even the most hardened of detectives. They started eight years ago - now the body count is up to six. The method of killing is identical, the backgrounds of the girls identical - all drug-users and prostitutes. Then a seventh body is found. The modus operandi is the same - but the victim is a young student with the 'face of an angel'. The profile of the murderer has changed dramatically. Determined to earn the respect of her male colleagues, Anna stumbles on a vital piece of information which links one man to the killings, a much-loved actor on the brink of international stardom. His arrest would create a media frenzy. But if he were foundinnocent, his wouldn't be the only career over - Anna's hard fought for reputation would be destroyed once and for all … 'Lynda La Plante practically invented the thriller. Above Suspicion blew me away - it grabs you and doesn't let go until the last page' KARIN SLAUGHTER 'La Plante is building up an interesting body of writing that is underrated… Anna proves a resourceful and believable heroine and heralds the launch of a major new character' GUARDIAN 'The prime suspect here is an adored actor, poised to hit the big time. Could he really be behind a string of grisly murders? It's up to Anna Travis, La Plante's gutsy new heroine, to find out' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Like Jane Tennison, Anna Travis has to work a world which is still rampantly chauvinistic… it is a novel to read about the complexity of relationships, as well as for its compelling plot' DAILY EXPRESS


The Covert Sphere

The Covert Sphere

Author: Timothy Melley

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-11-15

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0801465478

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In December 2010 the U.S. Embassy in Kabul acknowledged that it was providing major funding for thirteen episodes of Eagle Four—a new Afghani television melodrama based loosely on the blockbuster U.S. series 24. According to an embassy spokesperson, Eagle Four was part of a strategy aimed at transforming public suspicion of security forces into something like awed respect. Why would a wartime government spend valuable resources on a melodrama of covert operations? The answer, according to Timothy Melley, is not simply that fiction has real political effects but that, since the Cold War, fiction has become integral to the growth of national security as a concept and a transformation of democracy. In The Covert Sphere, Melley links this cultural shift to the birth of the national security state in 1947. As the United States developed a vast infrastructure of clandestine organizations, it shielded policy from the public sphere and gave rise to a new cultural imaginary, "the covert sphere." One of the surprising consequences of state secrecy is that citizens must rely substantially on fiction to "know," or imagine, their nation’s foreign policy. The potent combination of institutional secrecy and public fascination with the secret work of the state was instrumental in fostering the culture of suspicion and uncertainty that has plagued American society ever since—and, Melley argues, that would eventually find its fullest expression in postmodernism. The Covert Sphere traces these consequences from the Korean War through the War on Terror, examining how a regime of psychological operations and covert action has made the conflation of reality and fiction a central feature of both U.S. foreign policy and American culture. Melley interweaves Cold War history with political theory and original readings of films, television dramas, and popular entertainments—from The Manchurian Candidate through 24—as well as influential writing by Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, E. L. Doctorow, Michael Herr, Denis Johnson, Norman Mailer, Tim O’Brien, and many others.


Book Synopsis The Covert Sphere by : Timothy Melley

Download or read book The Covert Sphere written by Timothy Melley and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In December 2010 the U.S. Embassy in Kabul acknowledged that it was providing major funding for thirteen episodes of Eagle Four—a new Afghani television melodrama based loosely on the blockbuster U.S. series 24. According to an embassy spokesperson, Eagle Four was part of a strategy aimed at transforming public suspicion of security forces into something like awed respect. Why would a wartime government spend valuable resources on a melodrama of covert operations? The answer, according to Timothy Melley, is not simply that fiction has real political effects but that, since the Cold War, fiction has become integral to the growth of national security as a concept and a transformation of democracy. In The Covert Sphere, Melley links this cultural shift to the birth of the national security state in 1947. As the United States developed a vast infrastructure of clandestine organizations, it shielded policy from the public sphere and gave rise to a new cultural imaginary, "the covert sphere." One of the surprising consequences of state secrecy is that citizens must rely substantially on fiction to "know," or imagine, their nation’s foreign policy. The potent combination of institutional secrecy and public fascination with the secret work of the state was instrumental in fostering the culture of suspicion and uncertainty that has plagued American society ever since—and, Melley argues, that would eventually find its fullest expression in postmodernism. The Covert Sphere traces these consequences from the Korean War through the War on Terror, examining how a regime of psychological operations and covert action has made the conflation of reality and fiction a central feature of both U.S. foreign policy and American culture. Melley interweaves Cold War history with political theory and original readings of films, television dramas, and popular entertainments—from The Manchurian Candidate through 24—as well as influential writing by Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, E. L. Doctorow, Michael Herr, Denis Johnson, Norman Mailer, Tim O’Brien, and many others.