THE IRAQ WAR: FROM POLITICAL ARGUMENT TO FICTIONAL DISCOURSE
THE IRAQ WAR: FROM POLITICAL ARGUMENT TO FICTIONAL DISCOURSE
Author(s): Radu SurdulescuSubject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
Keywords: neo-conservatism; the fatality count effect; two American cultures; history and rhetoric; the "poetic war" concept; heterotopia of purification; ritualized violence; alternate reality; the individual's war experience
Summary/Abstract: Of all the military conflicts the U.S. has been engaged in since 1941, the Iraq War enjoys in America the unwanted fame of being the most disfavoured, together with the Vietnam one, and of dividing the American nation sharply between its two main cultures. The present paper brings together, as in a mirror, the media discourse related to the Iraq campaign and the fictional representation of the same event. The argumentative texts have commonly taken a determined political stand about it, expressing anger, disappointment, stupefaction and, more seldom, approval and support. The two representative American fictions discussed here, authored by Don DeLillo and Paul Auster, are focused rather on the individual's experience of the Iraq War and adopt a much more complex and nuanced attitude towards this pivotal event in recent history.
Journal: University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series
- Issue Year: 2011
- Issue No: 02
- Page Range: 79-89
- Page Count: 10
- Language: English