Intervention Narratives examines the contradictory cultural representations of the US intervention in Afghanistan that help to justify an imperial foreign policy. These narratives involve projecting Afghans as brave anti-communist warriors who suffered the consequences of American disengagement with the region following the end of the Cold War, as victimized women who can be empowered through enterprise, as innocent dogs who need to be saved by US soldiers, and as terrorists who deserve punishment for 9/11. Given that much of public political life now involves affect rather than knowledge, feelings rather than facts, familiar recurring tropes of heroism, terrorism, entrepreneurship, and canine love make the war easier to comprehend and elicit sympathy for US military forces. An indictment of US policy, Bose demonstrates that contemporary imperialism operates on an ideologically diverse cultural terrain to enlist support for the war across the political spectrum.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acronyms ix
Introduction:
Intervention Narratives and Geopolitical Fetishism
1 The Premature-Withdrawal Narrative
Hegemonic Masculinities and the Liberal Humanist Subject
2 The Capitalist-Rescue Narrative
Afghan Women and Micro-Entrepreneurship
3 The Canine-Rescue Narrative
and Post-Humanist Humanitarianism
4 The Retributive-Justice Narrative
Osama bin Laden as Simulacra
Postscript: Three Presidents, One Policy
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Author
PURNIMA BOSE is associate professor of English and international studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, and also serves as chairperson of the international studies department. Her publications include Organizing Empire: Individualism, Collective Agency & India and co-edited volumes with Laura E. Lyons: Cultural Critique and the Global Corporation and a special issue of Biography on “Corporate Personhood.”
What People Are Saying
"At a time when US hegemony is being challenged and redefined, narratives about Afghanistan - combining the threats of terrorism with the attractions of the region's economic resources - are being used to underscore American exceptionalism and perceptions of national identity. Bose's astute book reveals the underbelly of these 'mock narratives' for what they are: stories that the US tells about itself, both internally and externally, to substitute affective relations for political analysis in the narrative that has become 'Afghanistan.'" Susan Jeffords, author of Hard Bodies
"Intervention Narratives is like a bright light switched on suddenly in the mind of those uneasy about temporizing in a world of perpetual war. Instead of probing stories about empire, Bose dismantles empire’s own – the narrative “soft weapons” concocted by strategists of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. In this beautifully factual, honest, and theoretically astute book – roving from canine rescue tales to premature withdrawal fantasies – she upends the usual meaning of posthumanism, affect, and post-truth by inserting them into the dark arenas of contemporary geopolitics." Timothy Brennan, author of Borrowed Light
"Intervention Narratives provides theoretical underpinning to explicate the narratives Bose analyzes, and Bose also offers a comprehensive thesis about what makes them persuasive, compulsively repeated, and ultimately harmful." Time Now
"Bose’s book marks one of the first that actually breaks down the assumptions of the abundance of war literature that has been written about Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. In effect, Bose takes on the knowledge–industrial complex that exists around Afghanistan, showing us, sometimes line by line, where the discursive violence lies, and how it sets the stage for actual violence." Helena Zeweri, Interentions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies