Military Masculinity and the Deserting Soldier in Stop-Loss (2008)

2020 ◽  
pp. 135-151
Author(s):  
Thomas Ærvold Bjerre

The chapter outlines the deserter narrative in American war culture, with a focus on the inherent tensions between normative ideals of masculinity and transgressive notions of cowardice. The chapter then analyzes Kimberly Peirce’s 2008 Iraq War film Stop-Loss in this context. The U.S. war film genre is regulated by certain conventions regarding masculinity, heroism and national identity, but by presenting the transgressive act of desertion as one of moral courage, Peirce challenges established notions of military masculinity and national identity. This challenge remains temporary, though: the main character retains the culturally powerful trope of the ideal male soldier. Ultimately, he is unable to turn his back on his men and his country, and the film is unable to fully undermine the potent trope that links nation, military and masculinity.

Author(s):  
Ekaterina V. Baydalova ◽  

The novel by Volodymyr Vynnychenko I want! (1915) was, on one hand, his literary answer to the discussion on the national question in Ukrainian society, and, on the other, it was his reaction to the accusations of him being a renegade resulting from his shift towards Russian literature. In 1907-1908, after the publication of his dramas and novels which were impregnated with the idea of “being honest with oneself” (it implied that all thoughts, feelings, and acts were to be in harmony), his works could be more easily published in Russian than in Ukrainian. This situation was taken by his compatriots as a betrayal against his native language and the national cause. In the novel I want! the problem of language identity is directly linked with national identity. In the beginning of the novel the main character, poet Andrey Halepa, despite being ethnic Ukrainian, spoke, thought, and wrote poems in Russian, and consequently his personality was ruined and his actions lacked motivation. It seems that after his unsuccessful suicide attempt and under the influence of a “conscious” Ukrainian, Halepa got in touch with his national identity and developed a life goal (the “revival” of the Ukrainian nation and the building of a free-labour enterprise). However, in the novel, national identity turns out to be incomplete without language identity. Halepa spoke Ukrainian with mistakes, had difficulty choosing suitable words, and discovered with surprise the meaning of some Ukrainian words from his former Russian friends. The open finale emphasises the irony of the discourse around a fast national “revival” without struggle and effort, and which only required someone’s will.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-37
Author(s):  
Simin Hojat ◽  
Denise Ginzo

The U.S. national debt reached the astounding figure of 22 trillion dollars in 2018 (Gomes & Sinclair, 2019). It splashed onto the headlines of newspapers and became a topic of interest for Nobel laureate economists, dividing opinions on the potential impacts and the necessity of corrective measures. Krugman (2019) advocates that the national debt is trivial for a large economy like the U.S.; whereas, economists, such as Summers (2019), assume a more cautious position in recommending clear restrictions on the never-ending rise in the national debt. Some intriguing questions persist: should measures to restrain or reduce the debt be taken? If so, what is the ideal time to put them into effect? The purpose of this study is to analyze the reasons for the increasing U.S. national debt and to raise a discussion on the ideas of these reputed economists to address these questions. Additionally, the fundamental principles of risk management have been explained to evaluate the national debt from a different perspective (Homan, 2013). The findings of this research show that there are similarities between the theory of risk management and the risk concerns involved in the U.S. national debt. The social impact of this research includes the potential for the risk management tools identified to be used in analyzing the sovereign national debt.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-115
Author(s):  
Oleg N. Vladimirov ◽  

The stories of K. Sergienko’s books make up the wanderings of heroes, as a rule, storytellers and participants in the events of personal and national history. In stories for teenagers, the ad-ventures of the heroes have the character of their initiation: “Kees Admiral Tulipovˮ (“Кеес Адмирал Тюльпановˮ), “Take us away, Pegasus!ˮ (“Увези нас, Пегас!ˮ), “Notebook bound in moroccoˮ (“Тетрадь в сафьяновом перплётеˮ). Or they correspond to the genetically related story about the prodigal son (“House on the Hillˮ – “Дом на гореˮ). In both cases, the characters' freedom of movement is largely motivated by their orphanhood. Most often, the main characters, young and old, travel incognito. This motive is introduced in the first sto-ry and becomes one of the plot-forming ones. An obligatory component of almost all books is the mystery of the female character. There are several secrets in “Borodino Awakeningˮ (“Бородинское пробуждениеˮ): for the main character – the secret of Berestov; he himself, who became Berestov in the events on the eve and during Borodin and does not call himself in the present tense; Natasha's secret; hoax Leppich. The unnamed hero of “The White Rondelˮ (“Белый рондельˮ) wanders incognito. In the same row, and the secret of the origin of Nastya, and remained a secret for her (“Notebook...ˮ). “Mysteriousˮ heroines in “House on the Hillˮ. The prehistory of the appearance of the Proud in the ravine (“Good-bye, ravineˮ) remains unknown to the reader. In some stories, the secret of the place is associated with the secret of the hero. Heroes travel with companions – Kees and Red Fox, Pochivalov and Osorgin, Berestov and Listov, Mike and Morris, Mr. Writer and Mr. Kitten, etc. The complex of obligatory motives in the historical prose of Sergienko, indicated in “Kees...ˮ, includes the motive of the hero's responsibility for the fate of the country (“Borodino Awakeningˮ, “Xeniaˮ (“Ксенияˮ), etc). This motive is associated with the motive of the he-roes’ dreams of the promised land, the ideal city and the motive of sacrifice. The tulip in the first story, not yet known to the Dutch, will turn into a flower with its miracu-lous properties in a number of works. The flower-bouquet motif is especially significant in the “House on the Hillˮ. In the same story, another motive of Sergienko’s prose comes to the fore – the star motive. Some of the peripheral motives become leading in individual books (the motives of the crimson beret, Holland, Mozart and Salieri, etc.). Homelessness, the instability of the heroes existence gives them the opportunity for self-realization, the chronicle of events – grows into a biography, and then into autobiography. Most of Sergienko’s works are based on the plots of a roguish, chivalrous novel and a novel of education, complicated by other plots. The story “Porcelain Headˮ (“Фарфоровая го- ловаˮ) testifies to the writer’s search for new ways in plot construction, caused by the rethinking of the romantic position of fighting against chaotic reality and rising above it.


2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin H. Kahl

The belief that U.S. forces regularly violate the norm of noncombatant immunity (i.e., the notion that civilians should not be targeted or disproportionately harmed during hostilities) has been widely held since the outset of the Iraq War. Yet the evidence suggests that the U.S. military has done a better job of respecting noncombatant immunity in Iraq than is commonly thought. It also suggests that compliance has improved over time as the military has adjusted its behavior in response to real and perceived violations of the norm. This behavior is best explained by the internalization of noncombatant immunity within the U.S. military's organizational culture, especially since the Vietnam War. Contemporary U.S. military culture is characterized by an “annihilation-restraint paradox”: a commitment to the use of overwhelming but lawful force. The restraint portion of this paradox explains relatively high levels of U.S. adherence with the norm of noncombatant immunity in Iraq, while the tension between annihilation and restraint helps to account for instances of noncompliance and for why Iraqi civilian casualties from U.S. operations, although low by historical standards, have still probably been higher than was militarily necessary or inevitable.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 519-532
Author(s):  
Stephanie Pedron

This paper examines historic federal immigration policies that demonstrate how the United States has rendered entire groups of people living inside and outside of its territory as outsiders. Collective representations like the Statue of Liberty suggest that the U.S. is a nation that welcomes all immigrants, when in reality, the U.S. has historically functioned as a “gatekeeper” that excludes specific groups of people at different times. The concurrent existence of disparate beliefs within a society’s collective consciousness influences the public’s views toward citizenship and results in policy outcomes that contrast sharply from the ideal values that many collective representations signify. As restrictive immigration controls are refined, insight into how immigrant exclusion via federal policy has evolved is necessary to minimize future legislative consequences that have the potential to ostracize current and future Americans.


2018 ◽  
pp. 36-74
Author(s):  
Dixa Ramírez

This chapter focuses on the ambivalent nationalism evident in the celebration of the first national Dominican poet, Salomé Ureña (1850-1897). Studying poems, letters, speeches, and essays by Ureña and some of her contemporaries, the chapter contends that the strong desire for Ureña’s poetry coexisted with the elite’s generalized assumption that the ideal citizen subject was a white man. It argues that Ureña’s embodiment of Dominican nonwhiteness combined with her status as a respectable woman allowed Dominicans of the intellectual and ruling elite to satisfy two intertwined impulses: to construct a national identity that could explain Dominican difference from Haiti, and, as such, justify a seat at the global table; and a tacit acceptance that a nonwhite woman such as Ureña could only be considered “the muse of the nation” because Dominican territory had a history of black freedom and leadership.


Author(s):  
Trinh T. Minh-ha

This chapter discusses the problem of an exit strategy during the final days of the George W. Bush administration and how these issues echo the U.S. policy on Vietnam of many years before. It goes further, however, to analyze how the Obama administration approached future conflict in its initial years. On the one hand, the Bush administration's official storyline had revived the familiar paranoia of having victory turned over to the enemies. On the other, the exit strategy for withdrawal also raised widespread doubt about what was achievable in Iraq and Afghanistan and what the comprehensive results of the Iraq War turned out to be. The classic double bind thus wrote itself into every discussion of the “post-Iraq” era of U.S. foreign policy.


Author(s):  
Laura Lindenfeld ◽  
Fabio Parasecoli
Keyword(s):  
The Us ◽  

The introduction follows the emergence of food films as an international genre before its success in the U.S, also discussing the concept of genre, and whether we can talk of a food film genre. The section also explores the connection between food film and embodiment, above all in terms of physical reactions of the viewers. It then investigate the increasing relevance of food in cultural and social debates in the US, and well as its growing visibility in the media


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Brunner ◽  
Galia Plotkin Amrami

In the aftermath of 9/11, the concept of psychological resilience, which refers to the ability to “bounce back” after adversity, became prominent across the American mental health community. Resilience thinking made its way quickly into the U.S. military, where it sparked the most expensive psychological intervention program in history. This article interweaves four strands of explanation—political, scientific, technological, and cultural—to account for the success of resilience thinking in the U.S. military and beyond. It shows that theories and practices of psychological resilience are not as novel as their proponents make them out to be. However, it also details how the ideal of a post-therapeutic, resilient subject became the cornerstone of a new, post-9/11 social imaginary. This article concludes that the contemporary ascendancy of psychological resilience indicates that rather than allying itself with the therapeutic as it had done previously, post-9/11 neoliberalism has moved toward the post-therapeutic.


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