Diplomats, Activists, and the Hauntology of American Empire in Martial Law Taiwan

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Derek Sheridan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
Foreign Service ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Despite open US support for the Kuomintang (kmt) during the martial law period, opposition and pro-independence politics to this day have been haunted by the spectre of the American empire. Imaginings of US power and intentions, however, have often exceeded the actual institutional traces of US presence, both extending and subverting US power. In this article, I explore how imperial conditions during martial law were imagined through the relationships Taiwan dissidents had with two kinds of US expatriates: foreign service officers and civilian anti-kmt activists. While the former were formally bound to the principle of ‘non-interference’ despite local appeals, the latter justified ‘intervention’ as resistance against existing US support of the kmt. Based on a close reading of memoirs and historical surveys by former diplomats and activists, I examine how the micro-politics of the Cold War US presence contributed to spectres of American empire beyond the intentions of its putative planners.

Stereotypes and Jewish Musical Topics in East German Film: Ambiguities and Allosemitism in Hotel Polan und seine Gäste

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Frühauf
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Jewish Family ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
German Film ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract The miniseries Hotel Polan und seine Gäste tells the story of three generations of a Jewish family of hoteliers in Bohemia from 1908 to National Socialist persecution. Produced by GDR television in the early 1980s, the series was subsequently broadcast in other European countries and met with a mixed reception. Later on, scholars evaluated it as blatantly antisemitic and anti-Zionist. This essay seeks to re-evaluate these prerogatives by centring the analysis of the miniseries on a close reading of its music—a method not often used in Jewish studies, but a suitable lens through which to interrogate the employment of stereotypes, especially in film, and in light of textual sources from the Cold War era often being reflective of ideologies rather than facts. Employing critical theories of cultural studies and film music, it seeks to identify stereotypes and their dramatic placement and to analyse their operation. It asserts that story, image, and sound constitute both synchronous and asynchronous agents that perpetuate various stereotypes associated with Jews, thereby placing Hotel Polan in the liminal space of allosemitism. Constructed through difference from a perceived norm, Hotel Polan ultimately represents a space in which the egregious stereotype and the strategic employment of types meet. Its deployment of Jewish musical topics specifically shows that it is less their dramatic function that is of relevance, but the discourse that they have the power to enable.

Through a Glass Darkly: Looking at Conflict Prevention, Management, and Termination. By Stephen J. Cimbala. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001. 224p. $65.00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 680-681
Author(s):  
Joseph B. Underhill-Cady
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World Order ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Conflict Prevention ◽  
American Empire ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
Arms Races ◽  
Post September 11 ◽  
The Cold War

One test of a book is how well it weathers major developments in world events, and, as with the end of the Cold War, the beginning of the new war on terrorism presents recent publications in international or military affairs with the danger of untimely relegation to the trash bin of history. After September 11, as we scramble to adjust and make sense of the “hunt for Osama,” Stephen Cimbala's work, however, remains a useful compendium of lessons from several recent wars, crises, and ongoing military challenges. Although the book is not as suddenly relevant as Samuel Huntington's (1998) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order or Chalmers Johnson's (2001) Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, the wisdom distilled within it is sound enough to apply equally well to the pre- and post-September 11 worlds. It is largely rooted in frameworks developed for studying the Cold War and superpower arms races, but Cimbala's examination of the new realities of military strategy and technology still has much to say about the war being waged in Afghanistan and the campaigns that are likely to follow.

scholarly journals Fundusz Pomocy Niezależnej Literaturze i Nauce Polskiej – reakcja polskiej emigracji na stan wojenny

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 117-134
Author(s):  
Jacky Challot
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The State ◽  
The West ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
Czeslaw Milosz ◽  
Western Intellectual ◽  
Polish Culture ◽  
The Cold War

Fund for the Continuity of Polish Independent Litterature and Humanities – the Reaction of Polish Emigration to the Martial Law This article presents the activity of the Fund for the Continuity of Polish Independent Litterature and Humanities, one of the reactions of the Polish intellectual emigration to the state of war triggered in Poland on December 13, 1981. Created in the Parisian circles of the magazine Kultura, the Fund brings together great personalities, such as: Józef Czapski, Jerzy Giedroyc, Konstanty Jeleński, Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, Czesław Miłosz. The nature of these activities and the renown of its animators places it in a more global and older strategy, initiated during the Cold War and aimed at the “de-Sovietization” of the minds in Western intellectual circles. This work is carried out on the basis of unpublished archives, retracing the two main axes of the activity of the Fund: editorial action and allocation of grants for representatives of the independent Polish culture. The Fund invested about five million French francs between 1982 and 1990 to co-finance the edition of 56 books and to award numerous grants for Polish creators for stays in the West. Its activity, spread over the decades 80 and 90, can be seen as a final touch in a broader strategy that contributed to the collapse of European communism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document