Amazing book April 19, 2011by
S.Martin
Oliver offers a set of critical tools that not only open analyses of America's recent and current war efforts, but also helps us to extend those analyses to our own everyday lives and ethics and politics more generally. The textbook challenges the general public to reflect meaningfully on current events, their representations in the media, and the social and political forces that undermine our interpretative capacities. What is surprising is her uncanny ability to do so in a way that skillfully addresses such a large and diverse audience. This textbook is really for everyone: for scholars, students, journalists, activists, and those who are simply concerned with the role of sex, sexuality, and sexual/sexed violence in politics, war, and the media. In a word, read this book! As for me, I'm very happy to deal with ecampus. The book looks as if it is new and the price was good. Thanks.
Women As Weapons of War:
5 out of
5
stars based on
1 user reviews.
Ever since Eve tempted Adam with her apple, women have been regarded as a corrupting and destructive force. The very idea that women can be used as interrogation tools, as evidenced in the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos, plays on age-old fears of women as sexually threatening weapons, and therefore the literal explosion of women onto the war scene should come as no surprise.
From the female soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib to Palestinian women suicide bombers, women and their bodies have become powerful weapons in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In Women as Weapons of War, Kelly Oliver reveals how the media and the administration frequently use metaphors of weaponry to describe women and female sexuality and forge a deliberate link between notions of vulnerability and images of violence. Focusing specifically on the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oliver analyzes contemporary discourse surrounding women, sex, and gender and the use of women to justify America's decision to go to war. For example, the administration's call to liberate "women of cover," suggesting a woman's right to bare arms is a sign of freedom and progress.
Oliver also considers what forms of cultural meaning, or lack of meaning, could cause both the guiltlessness demonstrated by female soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the profound commitment to death made by suicide bombers. She examines the pleasure taken in violence and the passion for death exhibited by these women and what kind of contexts created them. In conclusion, Oliver diagnoses our cultural fascination with sex, violence, and death and its relationship with live news coverage and embedded reporting, which naturalizes horrific events and stymies critical reflection. This process, she argues, further compromises the borders between fantasy and reality, fueling a kind of paranoid patriotism that results in extreme forms of violence.
"Kelly Oliver's book offers a brilliant and unforgettable feminist critique of the recent ways in which 'women' have been used, once again, as the terrain and flesh over which to fight yet another war. At stake in this war is also the future of feminism. Challenging the bunker rhetoric coming out of Washington that combines a noxious mixture of anti-Arab racism with the latest version of the white men's burden to save women from pre-modern cultures, Oliver offers an eloquent plea for the continuing relevance of feminist ways of interpreting the world. In these times of shame and sorrow, this book is indispensable reading." - Eduardo Mendieta, associate professor of philosophy, Stony Brook University
Read an excerpt from the Introduction, "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Rock 'n' Roll"
Other versions by this Author
