Violent Cartographies
Mapping Cultures of WarMichael J. Shapiro
An innovative critique of the way historians and political scientists study war.
How can we resist a nation-state vision of the globe? What is needed to "unmap" the familiar world? In Violent Cartographies, Michael J. Shapiro considers these questions, exploring the significance of war in contemporary society and its connections to the geographical imaginary.
Employing an ethnographic perspective, Shapiro uses whiplash reversals and bizarre juxtapositions to jolt readers out of conventional thinking about international relations and security studies. Considering the ideas of thinkers ranging from von Clausewitz to Virilio, from Derrida to DeLillo, Shapiro distances readers from familiar political and strategic accounts of war and its causes.
Shapiro uses literary and film analyses to elucidate his themes. For example, he considers such cultural artifacts as U.S. Marine recruiting television commercials, American war movies, and General Schwarzkopf's autobiography, elaborating how a certain image of American masculinity is played out in the military imaginary and in the media. Other topics are Melville's The Confidence Man, Buñuel's film That Obscure Object of Desire, and a comparison of the U.S. invasion of Grenada to an Aztec "flower war." Throughout, Shapiro draws attention to the violence of the colonial encounters through which many modern nation-states were formed, and ultimately suggests possible directions for an ethics of minimal violence in the encounter with others.
The overall effect is of a complex, cumulative, and layered analysis of the historical and moral conditions of the current use of violence in the conduct of international relations. A fascinating and challenging work, Violent Cartographies will interest anyone concerned with the connections between war and culture.
"The title of this book does not prepare the reader for the scope and ambition of the project. Far from being a rehashed version of the familiar if fashionable concern with conceptual, analytical, and discursive boundaries, it lays the groundwork for an alternative, ethnographic approach to security studies. In Shapiro's skillful hands, the very things that conventional security studies tries to forget comes back to haunt it. Violent Cartographies is a fascinating, beautifully written, and unquestionably important contribution." American Political Science Review
"A thought-provoking and challenging study. Shapiro pushes assertions in a number of convincing directions. Violent Cartographies is an absorbing read in the service of re-arranging your thought processes to accommodate a new vision of war." Ecumene
Michael J. Shapiro is professor of political science at the University of Hawai'i. He is the author of Reading the Postmodern Polity (1992) and For Moral Ambiguity (2001).
OUT OF PRINT
264 pages 2 halftones 5 7/8 x 9 (1997)