Military Struggle Research Articles

Historical Critique and Political Voice after the Ottoman Empire

In a famous 1882 lecture at the Sorbonne, Ernest Renan highlighted a certain obligation to forget, even a necessity for historical error, in the formation of a nation. Renan constructed his argument on the basis of what he perceived to be a straightforward empirical contrast apparent in his day. On the one hand, the countries of Western and Southern Europe, such as France, England, Germany, Spain, and Italy, had successfully—if through different processes—established nations on the basis of carefully constructed and selectively forgotten historical pasts. The Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, encompassed an unwieldy motley of ethnic and religious groups, each maintaining separate historical identities. In effect, the empire was a state without an internally cohesive national body. Renan surely would have felt vindicated by the fact that three-and-a-half decades after his lecture the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the various successor states that emerged in its wake justified their sovereignty by overtly defining mutually exclusive historical pasts for the nations they respectively claimed to represent. The project of institutionalized forgetting was a key element in one of the most spectacular transitions of political sovereignty in the twentieth century. The demise of the empire would yield the outlines of a new political geography. The map of the modern Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe is the product of a world brought into being with the collapse of the Ottoman state. Across the region, anxieties about the salience of the Ottoman past have persistently emerged in ways that reveal the essentially unsettled character of modern political belonging. Territorial borders from the Balkans through the Middle East that were drawn up in the aftermath of imperial collapse were never permanently inscribed, often requiring powerful investments of military power to defend. Settler colonial expansion into Palestine and continued militant struggles over Kurdish political sovereignty attest to the ongoing instability of territorial arrangements organized within the past century. Equally important, the ideological and affective conditions of national identity, loyalty, and commitment that various states in the region promoted remain contested and often require repressive state interventions to sustain.

The Art of War: Instability, Insecurity, and Ideological Imagery in Northern Ireland’s Political Murals, 1979–1998

This article examines the purpose behind, and rhetorical content of, political wall murals produced during the troubles in Northern Ireland. I utilize a semiotic approach to analyze the ways that the symbolic content and physical placement of Northern Irish murals was used by actors on both sides of the conflict. I examine the major thematic traditions utilized by muralists on each side and situate them within the historical and political contexts of the conflict in Northern Ireland. This approach highlights the ways that murals did more than simply champion ideological causes, as earlier scholarship has argued, but served an active role in efforts to catalyze cultural support for organizations’ political goals. I argue that murals played a key role for organizations on both sides of the conflict, as they each struggled to craft a communal self-identification and legitimizing central narrative that furthered their ideological goals. Organizations on both sides used murals to mobilize cultural support for their political and military struggles. In this regard, murals functioned as a form of mythic speech, attempting to depoliticize highly political ideologies and make the rhetoric used by the competing groups seem natural and pure. The grassroots nature of the mural traditions is particularly telling in this regard, exposing the deep-seated insecurity of organizations on both sides. This insecurity is further reflected by, and served as a catalyst for, the paramilitary violence that was a defining characteristic of Northern Ireland for so long.

From a Daughter of the Republic to a Femme Fatale: The Life and Times of Turkey's First Professional Fashion Model, Lale Belkıs

From a Daughter of the Republic to a Femme Fatale:The Life and Times of Turkey's First Professional Fashion Model, Lale Belkıs Rustem Ertug Altinay (bio) I woke up with a voice. It was not scary. On the contrary, how shall I explain, it was a heart-warming, soothing, echoing, soft voice. It was saying "Belkıs . . . Belkıs . . ." The voice was rising with echoes. When I opened my eyes, I saw a man's arm reaching my bed from the ceiling. A hairy, long, strong arm rested its fist on my bed. As if it was talking to me. That strong voice was saying "Belkıs, a very beautiful life awaits you . . . One day you will do very important things, you will be appreciated . . ." It was repeating these words. —Lale Belkıs, İpek Çoraplar (2006, 23, translation is mine) This dream was experienced by Belkıs Durmaz, a Turkish girl growing up in Istanbul in the 1940s, who, more than half a century later, narrated it in her memoirs. The interpellation however, was by no means unique to Belkıs or her unconscious. It was a reflection of gender politics in early Republican Turkey under the successive Republican People's Party gov­ernments, especially in the promises made by the state to women and the bargains female citizens entered into with the republic under the politics of state feminism. In this essay, I will follow the story of Belkıs Durmaz, who later became the fashion model, actor, singer, songwriter, poet, painter, and designer Lale Belkıs. Moving from her experiences as a woman and her career as Turkey's first professional fashion model, I will discuss the role of fashion in Turkey's modernization and nation-building program. My focus will be on the unique history of fashion modeling in Turkey from its inception as [End Page 113] a state-sponsored performance form to its integration into the capitalist market economy, and the emergence of diplomatic fashion shows where modernization, postcoloniality, nationalism, and gender politics coalesce to create a performance of Turkish national identity. Exploring the entan­gled dynamics of design, production, promotion, and consumption, I will discuss how the gendered dynamics of modernization and national­ism gave rise to a unique style. As I examine the perceived relationship between national identity and the female body, I will also analyze the mul­tiple significations of bodies across competing political paradigms. Early Republican Sartorial Politics and the Girls' Institutes The first two decades of the Republic of Turkey following its inception in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk were character­ized by a series of legal, political, and cultural reforms aiming to construct the country as a modern, secular (albeit implicitly Sunni Muslim) nation-state. Women's role in Turkey's modernization and nation-state construc­tion program reflected the patterns of women's inclusion in nationalist projects as identified by Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis (1994): they were expected to continue the biological, social, and cultural reproduction of the collectivity; participate in national, economic, political, and military struggles; reproduce boundaries of the nation; and signify ethnic/national differences. In the context of a transition from a multiethnic Islamic Empire to a secular nation-state based on the idea of one culture, ethnic­ity, language, and religion, women were conceptualized not only as "the builders of a 'new life,' a modern way of living both in the private and the public spheres" (Göle 1997, 51) but also as the symbols of this new life. In order to facilitate women's participation in the modernization and nation-state-building efforts, the government appropriated some demands of the Ottoman and Turkish feminist movement and created a "state feminism" by granting women certain civil and political rights as well as educational and professional opportunities. A particularly important site for the transformation of women's bodies and subjectivities in the service of the Kemalist regime was the girls' insti­tutes. Established in the 1927-28 academic year by restructuring the girls' schools of sartorial arts and crafts built in the late Ottoman Era (Arat 1998, 162), these schools combined the basic postelementary school curricu­lum with...

Art for a new audience in the Risorgimento: a meditation

Competing foreign powers had divided the Italic peninsula into regions, so that it resembled the chessboard of Europe. With Napoleon's occupation, an Italian consciousness began to arise. As Neoclassicism and Romanticism ceded to Realism, artists participated in liberal politics and military struggles, many fighting under Garibaldi. Patriotic sentiments appeared in encoded genre scenes – for example, Hayez's two La meditazione paintings, the second subtitled L'Italia nel 1848 – or contemporary themes, like those by the Macchiaioli and the Induno brothers. Risorgimento content, including battles, multiplied, and they were joined by photography. Shifts in taste and patronage, from the Church and the ruling classes to liberal aristocrats, industrial entrepreneurs and middle-class professionals, encouraged new venues for the exhibition of art: the Exposition Universelle, civic Promotrici, Ricasoli's competition and the Esposizione Italiana. After unification, the search for political and artistic reform continued against disillusionment, developing technology and industrialization.

Visualising FRELIMO’s liberated zones in Mozambique, 1962–1974

Headquartered in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) engaged the Portuguese army from 1962 to 1974 in a ground war over Mozambique’s independence. At the centre of this military struggle were the geographical regions of the liberated zones, areas in northern Mozambique that FRELIMO designated as under its control. In order to make an exile movement present and real for illiterate populations, FRELIMO trained a group of its soldiers as photographers, who travelled across Mozambique to photograph the war. This act of photographing and distributing images had its political advantages for drawing international aid, but these image-making processes also risked disrupting the ethnically diverse coalitions that made up FRELIMO’s military and popular support. In an effort to address scholarship on liberation movements in Africa, which has overlooked the importance of photography, this article considers the technical, technological, and structural mechanisms FRELIMO instituted from 1962 to 1974 to facilitate the production and circulation of photographs of its liberated zones. Reading FRELIMO’s photographic archive of the liberation struggle against the stories of their producers and users allows for an understanding of how the visualising of the liberated zone enabled FRELIMO to situate itself as a national movement with broad regional and ethnic support inside Mozambique, all the while articulating for international audiences a multiracial and countrywide war effort. The liberated zone was not just a physical landmark, but its picturing transformed it into a visually constituted category for foreign and local populations to identify with an independent Mozambique under FRELIMO’s control.

Sacrifice and Redemption in To the End of the Land

David Grossman is commonly considered a genuine spokesman of the Israeli peace camp, expressing its plea for a withdrawal from a militaristic agenda and rhetoric and for a breaking of the vicious circle of wars they bring about. The present essay proposes a reading of To the End of the Land according to which the novel deviates from these political stances as it almost unresistingly accepts a national narrative which does not allow for an alternative to the repetitive military struggle. It argues that the escape journey of the female protagonist, Ora, together with the biological father of her son, Avram, from the terrible news of this son’s death in battle, is in fact also a journey of revival and cure from the catastrophes of a previous war, enabled by the present one. To the End of the Land thus complies with the traditional Zionist version of the myth of the binding of Isaac (Akedah), a version which describes a sacrifice of the sons for the redemption of their fathers.

The Migrant Workers' Movement in the Democratic Consolidation of Korea

This paper traces the rise of the migrant workers' movement in Korea and the conditions of their collective actions in the militant tradition of Korean democratisation. It does this with a focus on the causes of militancy and its similarities to and differences from the characteristics of Korean democratisation. This paper argues that some defects of the political system, the role of oppressive government policy, and intervention of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are the combined reason for migrant worker militancy. However, this militant trend faces the challenge of the judicialisation of politics as democratic consolidation has been deepened and the legal order of society is emphasised. Judicialisation requires reconsideration on how to maximise one's interest through legal procedure rather than militant struggle. Such a legal approach, however, again confronts a dilemma in which simply following legal procedure will not generate any change in existing laws. Furthermore, according to various cleavage lines such as labour vs. capital, national vs. non-national, and native vs. foreign cultures, the priority of struggles in migrant workers and support groups has been differentiated into labour rights, political rights, and cultural rights. In this situation, the migrant workers' movement should be sensitive to locate its future agenda considering the needs of migrants as well as the changing context of Korean society.

해양의 이익과 해양력에 관한 연구

해양은 지구상에서 제일 큰 물의 지리적 단위이다. 해양에 관한 국제법은 <유엔 해양법협약>으로 이는 지구상에서 유일한 <지구 헌법>이다. 동 협약에 의하여 세계 1/3의 해양이 연안국에 속하게 되었다. 다시 말해 해양의 이용권과 관리권을 연안국 중심으로 관할권을 주어서 연안국의 관할범위가 넓어지게 된 것이다. 이에 따라 세계 각국의 권력범위는 새로운 변화를 가져오게 되었다. 즉, 해양국토도 육지국토와 마찬가지로 한 국가의 중요한 물질적 조건이 된 것이다. 따라서 현재는 해양에 대한 전력이 그 어느 때 보다도 중요하게 되었다. 이제 해양은 국제 경제와 국제정치 및 군사투쟁의 중요한 무대로서 한 국가의 권익, 자원개발 및 이용에 관한 분쟁이 많이 나타나게 되었다. 이러한 분쟁을 해결하려면 강대한 종합적 국력과 함께 해양력이 필요한 것으로 분석되었고, 해양력에서 가장 큰 비중을 차지하는 것은 해양경찰력으로 나타났다. The oceans are the largest body of water geographical unit in the earth. In accordance with the general said of the international law, countries on the international law must have four elements: 1) settled residents; 2) determined territory; 3) a certain degree of government organizations; 4) the sovereignty. The country's basic rights are: 1) the right to independence; 2) the right to equal; 3) the right to jurisdiction; 4) the right to self-protection. UNCLOS as the only one of the "Constitution of the Earth" on the earth, the implementation of its entry into force make about 1/3 of the world's oceans should be assigned to the coastal states, in the use and management of ocean gave the coastal states the center jurisdiction, the coastal states' jurisdiction sphere had been expanded, the power comparison among all countries in the world had new changes. The ocean territory, like the land territory, is the most major material condition of a country. The ocean's strategic status is extremely important, is the important stage of the international political, economic and military struggle, there are many disputes about the rights and interests, resources and the development and utilization on the oceans. To resolve these disputes is bound to depend on a strong comprehensive national strength, including politics, economy, science and technology, as well as the powerful marine force, in which maritime police plays an important role.

Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America: Race, Nation, and Community During the Liberal Period

Over recent decades, historians have revised earlier portrayals of Indians and Afro-Latin Americans as mere “canon fodder” for the elite. Scholars such as Florencia Mallon, George Reid Andrews, and James E. Sanders, among others, argued that not only hunger, patron-client ties, and conscription but also ideas and alliances mobilized subordinate groups. Their military participation, moreover, decisively influenced outcomes such as the enactment of racially egalitarian constitutions, the end of slavery, and the ascendancy of liberalism in much of Latin America. Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America continues in this same vein while painting an even more paradoxical and multilayered picture of Afro – Latin American and Indian participation in armies and wars.The book is divided into two thematic parts, each of which spans the years 1850 to 1950. In part 1, Sanders, Justin Wolfe, Aline Helg, Nicola Foote, Richard N. Adams, and David Carey Jr. examine soldiering in a wide array of contexts. In part 2, Maria de Fátima Costa, Peter M. Beattie, Carlos Martínez Sarasola, Julia O’Hara, Joanna Crow, Vincent C. Peloso, and René D. Harder Horst focus on major interstate wars and genocidal campaigns against Indians. The authors combine archival research on social and political history with the study of representations and, in some cases, oral histories.In the first case study, Sanders finds that blacks and mulattos in Colombia sought new rights and identities by soldiering as Liberals. Indians, he argues, had more varied experiences and allegiances. Indians initially sought to protect preexisting rights and identities, though their motives and identities could be transformed. The rest of the collection largely bears out this pattern, yet the diversity of experiences recounted also demonstrates the difficulty of generalizing about subaltern choices and actions.Paradoxes abound. The editors rightly note in relation to Wolfe’s chapter on Nica-ragua that historical actors often defied “easy assumptions about what marginalized groups ‘should’ do” (p. 10). Their insight applies to most of the contributions to this collection. Some of the alliances and antagonisms revealed here are surprising. For example, Wolfe finds that Afro-Nicaraguan Liberals in León initially supported the pro-slavery filibusterer William Walker. Peloso examines why Afro-Peruvians massacred their Chinese neighbors during the War of the Pacific, while O’Hara notes that Tarahumara Indians dealt devastating blows to the Apaches during the violent pacification of northern Mexico. Adams and Crow reveal that Indians were sometimes officially designated as unfit to serve as soldiers but served anyway. Carey interviews Kaqchikel-Mayan elders in Guatemala who remember their military service under the notorious dictatorship of Jorge Ubico as a largely positive experience that simultaneously strengthened both their ties to the nation and their ethnic identities. The authors generally do a good job of analyzing the complexities of their findings without romanticizing their subjects.The editors emphasize that military enrollment and warfare could create space for “marginal people to push forward their own agenda” and express “multiple visions of nationalism” (p. 18). Yet, much of the history recounted in these essays is tragic. Time and again, Indians were massacred. Even when labeled “friendly,” or fighting on the winning side, Indians often lost more than they gained. The armed forces provided opportunities for social mobility, yet, in this volume, the people defined as “Indian” or “black” most often ended up impoverished and excluded from the full benefits of citizenship. The elite was afraid and disdainful of the poor fighters it mobilized. Blacks’ and Indians’ very participation in war was often used as an excuse to pathologize them as inherently violent and unfit for citizenship.The title of the volume emphasizes identity. Horst explores the complex ethnolinguistic labels applied to the indigenous peoples of the Chaco, while Foote concludes her chapter on Ecuador with the emergence of social movements expressing black and Indian consciousness. Sanders, Carey, and Crow all provide examples of violent struggles strengthening some indigenous identities even as other indigenous groups were decimated. However, thorny methodological questions regarding identity are elided, such as, for example, whether someone should be called “black” versus “mulatto,” or “mestizo” versus “Indian.” For the most part, a full exploration of ethnic and national identity formation and transformation through warfare remains an unfulfilled promise in this otherwise successful volume.This observation is not meant to detract from the high quality of the individual essays, which reveal myriad ways that Indians and Afro-Latin Americans contributed to nation-state formation and gained ambivalent inclusion as citizens. This ambivalent citizenship is evident in the image that graces the volume’s cover, of Kaqchikel volunteer soldiers conducting military exercises in Ubico’s Guatemala while wearing ethnic dress. In teasing out the implications of many episodes such as this one, Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America advances our knowledge of subaltern participation in nation-state formation.

Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America: Race, Nation, and Community During the Liberal Period. Nicole Foote and René D. Harder Horst, eds., Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010. 350 pp.

Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America: Race, Nation, and Community During the Liberal Period. Nicole Foote and René D. Harder Horst, eds., Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010. 350 pp.

Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America: Race, Nation, and Community During the Liberal Period - edited by Foote, Nicola and Harder Horst, René D.

Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America: Race, Nation, and Community During the Liberal Period - edited by Foote, Nicola and Harder Horst, René D.

Frontiers of Violence in North-East Africa: Genealogies of Conflict since 1800 (review)

Reviewed by: Frontiers of Violence in North-East Africa: Genealogies of Conflict since 1800 Edmond J. Keller (bio) Frontiers of Violence in North-East Africa: Genealogies of Conflict since 1800, by Richard J. Reid New York: Oxford University Press, 2011; pp. 310. $99.00 hardcover. This is an excellent exercise in the historical interpretation of one of the most significant contemporary regions of Africa. Not only does Richard Reid focus on the states of the region, but more importantly he focuses on its peoples. Others have written about these matters, but the author approaches his subject in a novel and refreshing manner. He relies on both primary and secondary data to write about state formation and the construction of expanded political communities in the Horn of Africa throughout history. Reid uses as his analytical focus the violent way in which these polities were historically constructed. He concentrates on military struggles that took place in broadly conceived frontier zones—domestic and regional. The book begins with a prologue that lays out the broad outlines of the theory that guides Reid's analysis. He argues that we clearly need a fuller appreciation of la longue durée (the long view of history) in terms of the history of violent conflict in the Horn of Africa region. This is portrayed as a history that represents the evolution of several cultures of violence among the peoples of the region. To an extent this is a useful approach to reinterpreting history as it highlights the fact that most if not all states were formed through conquest and violence. In a sense, there is nothing new here; but this is the first time that the Horn region has been framed from such a comprehensive perspective. Part 1 of the book lays out the context of the analysis that follows and focuses on the relevant extant literature on the subject. Reid seeks to interpret the region by concentrating on its peoples from an innovative historiographical perspective. He paints a picture that places at the center of the "zone of violence" the Tigrinya of highland Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, the Amhara of central Ethiopia, and the Oromo and Somali of southern and eastern Ethiopia. He argues for a new historiography, based not on the typical "center-based" analysis but on the "peripheries" or the borderlands of the historic Ethiopian Empire. Reid argues that frontiers frequently produce highly militarized societies—they are fault lines or contested zones. Further, he contends that the Eritrean-Ethiopian frontier zone is the epicenter of much of the region's violence. One is left wondering what [End Page 139] Reid means by "epicenter." This is a matter of perspective. However, what is revealed is the author's continued bias toward state-centered research. In this case, he is most interested in the manner in which the Ethiopian state was consolidated and changed over time. Like a good number of books focusing on this region, this book traces the history of the region to antiquity: the Axum city state, the development of the habasha polity (the nation of the chosen people), and the new Zion. Ethiopian mythology claims that the habasha people are the descendants of the Israelites and the House of David. The new center of Zion, then, has become the Ethiopian heartland. The book goes on to focus on the interaction of the heartland with peripheral regions including the Oromo frontier. Reid, however, seems not to view as important, as others have, the way that the inhabitants of the Oromo frontier penetrated or were invited into the Ethiopian heartland and in fact became central to it rather than peripheral. One exception is Reid's treatment of Lij (Prince) Yasu and his endorsement of Islam. This made Yasu a heretic in the eyes of the Ethiopian (Abyssinian) nobility (129-31), and thus unfit to inherit the throne. Part 2 of the book focuses on the "long" nineteenth century and the emergence and consolidation of the imperial state, beginning with Emperor Tewodros in the middle of the century and continuing on for almost 100 years to the demise of the last Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie I, in the late twentieth century. Reid in rich historical...

In the Shackles of the Evil One The Portrayal of Tsar Symeon I the Great (893–927) in the Oration "On the treaty with the Bulgarians"

The year 927 brought a peace treaty between Byzantium and Bulgaria, which ended many years of military struggle between both the states. On this occasion Theodore Daphnopates delivered a speech praising the newly concluded agreement. The blame for the accursed war was to put on (already dead) Symeon I (893–927), the then Bulgarian ruler, and his ungodly aspirations to the crown of the Byzantine Empire. It was his personal ambitions that were a real infringement on the God’s earthly order, and it was only and exclusively Symeon, who lead to the appearance of a crack on the House of the Lord. The Bulgarian ruler is referred to as pharaoh, holding the chosen people captive. Symeon is also characterised like various ungodly personages from the Old and New Testament, i e Goliath, Ader, Holophernes or even the Devil himself. It can therefore be concluded that Symeon was a usurper, tyrant, sower of discord, murderer, fratricide, and one who committed sacrilege. Daphnopates explicitly writes about his lies, hiding his true intentions, not fulfilling agreements and instability in his proceedings. So, by means of a variety of hints to ancient history, literature and the Bible the speaker present Symeon as a usurper and an enemy of truth, a servant of Satan.

Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy's Military Struggles from Africa and Western Europe to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union 1935-45

Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy's Military Struggles from Africa and Western Europe to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union 1935-45

War and the Culture of CultureHuman Terrain: War Becomes Academic. Film. Produced, written, and directed by James Der Derian, David Urdris, and Michael Urdris. Distributed by Bullfrog Films, Oley, PA. 2010.

In the documentary Human Terrain: War Becomes Academic, the filmmakers trace two collateral arcs. One is about the Human Terrain System (HTS) project that is led by the U.S. Army. This project embeds social scientists with combat troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to obtain sociocultural data on local populations that can be used in military decision making. The second arc is about a young anthropologist, Michael Bhatia, who joins the HTS project and whose story ends tragically. In the prelude to this film we hear the framing questions: What are the objectives here? What is the why? The HTS project is controversial and has been publicly debated since its inception (see, e.g., Forte 2011; Gonzalez 2008; McFate and Fondacaro 2008). This film dives headlong into this debate without taking sides. The film begins with “Part I: Culture of War” in the desert of California at the Twentynine Palms Marine Air Ground Combat Center. Here the marines have created a simulated Iraqi village called Mojave Viper. The purpose of this training is to create simulations and scenarios using actors as Iraqi “locals” to help the marines deal with situations in a more realistic way. As the commander of the Fourth Marine Division put it, “We’re in a different war. We are in a war that is as much a cultural struggle as it is a military struggle. That demands subtlety and where, in the case of this sort of training, not only does the senior leadership need to put on the mantle of diplomacy, but so does the young corporal.” In “Part II: War Becomes Academic,” we see the tension that social scientists, particularly anthropologists, are struggling with in this program. The conversation turns to the changes in the nature of war and how the U.S. military is trying to deal with the new reality of counterinsurgency. One of the architects of the HTS project, Montgomery McFate, states that this project to reform the military grew out of a

Nicola Foote and René D. Harder Horst (eds.), Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America: Race, Nation, and Community during the Liberal Period (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2010), pp. xvii+368, $69.95, hb.

Nicola Foote and René D. Harder Horst (eds.), Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America: Race, Nation, and Community during the Liberal Period (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2010), pp. xvii+368, $69.95, hb. - Volume 43 Issue 4

THROUGH THE MIRAGE: RETRACING MOMENTS OF A WAR “UP THERE”

Review articles allow books to speak, however subjective such articles may be. Reviewers, participants and observers share their reading of the written work or discourse as interpreted by human beings within time and context. If Anthony Giddens is correct that segmental interests lie deeply embedded in structures of signification and if Feuer is to the point in his argument “that in ideology words are measured for their fire-power, not the truth they hold”, then any attempt to make sense of what happened where, when and how and with what consequences during the Border War/Bush War and its outcomes in Angola will be no easy matter for historians and social scientists. It is understandable that for the observer and participant alike it seems that “truth” and “fact” became obscured by the drifting smoke and dust of past ideological and military struggles. Include the static views then held, and none closer do we come to understanding this war in all its complexity.Â

THROUGH THE MIRAGE: RETRACING MOMENTS OF A WAR “UP THERE”

Review articles allow books to speak, however subjective such articles may be. Reviewers, participants and observers share their reading of the written work or discourse as interpreted by human beings within time and context. If Anthony Giddens is correct that segmental interests lie deeply embedded in structures of signification and if Feuer is to the point in his argument “that in ideology words are measured for their fire-power, not the truth they hold”, then any attempt to make sense of what happened where, when and how and with what consequences during the Border War/Bush War and its outcomes in Angola will be no easy matter for historians and social scientists. It is understandable that for the observer and participant alike it seems that “truth” and “fact” became obscured by the drifting smoke and dust of past ideological and military struggles. Include the static views then held, and none closer do we come to understanding this war in all its complexity.

Military struggle and identity formation in Latin America: race, nation, and community during the liberal period

Significantly advances the discussion about the connections among race, identity, military service, and armed struggle in Latin America during a crucial period of nation-building.--Hendrik Kraay, University of Calgary Sure to become a standard part of the historical literature on the 'national' period in Latin America, these essays give an excellent ground-level view of the process of state formation through war.--Miguel Angel Centeno, author of Blood and Debt Military engagements in Latin America between 1850 and 1950 helped shape emerging nation states and collective consciousness in profound and formative ways. This century, known as the liberal period, was an important time for state formation in the region, as well as for the development of current national borders. This collection of essays aims to assess the role black and indigenous Latin Americans played in the military struggles of this period, and how these efforts contributed to the formation of ideas about race and national identity. While some indigenous people and Afro-Latin Americans came into closer contact with the descendents of colonizers as a result of military service, others turned inward with strengthened ties to their local communities. Many were at times victims of violent conflicts in Latin America, but they surprisingly also shaped the outcome of these wars and employed the wars to advance their own political agendas. The book offers exciting new interpretations and explanations of this key period in Latin American history.

By any Means Necessary

Perhaps one of the most egregious cases of unmitigated injustice in the United States is the prosecution of the Angola 3: Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, and Robert. King Wilkerson. Although King was released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 2001. his comrades continue to serve life sentences in solitary confinement for the alleged 1972 murder of a prison guard. This conviction is largely recognized as wrongful and designed to silence the three Black Panther activists, who had struggled for prison reform, to end prison rape, and to improve the inhumane conditions that prevail in places like the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Formerly an antebellum slave plantation, today the prison complex is a 180,000-acre work camp, where three quarters of the inmates are African American.' As the largest employer in the region, the Louisiana State Penitentiary pays prisoners anywhere between four and twenty cents per hour for their forced labor. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Brooklyn-born activist artist Jackie Sumell (2) was moved by a lecture given by Robert King in California in 2001 and began a correspondence with Herman Wallace, who has been living in a 6 x 9 foot cell for more than thirty-nine years, a situation Sumell refers to as a psychological mind fuck. (3) Wallace is forced to remain in this cell twenty-three hours per day, seven days per week. In a 2003 letter, Sumell asked Wallace, What kind of house does a man who has lived in a 6 x 9 foot box for over thirty years dream of? Wallace's response became the basis of The House That Herman Built (2003-present), an ongoing collaborative video project between Sumell and Wallace. As part of this extensive collaboration, Sumell produced a video featuring a CAD architectural drawing based on Wallace's written description of his ideal home, as narrated by King. The video opens with an exterior view of the house, surrounded by gardens and flowers. From a two-car garage, the viewer passes a storage space with a pantry for dry goods. In his review of the project, Wallace noticed that among the items represented in the pantry, Sumell had forgotten the Tabasco sauce. The fact that Wallace noticed such a tiny omission shows the extent to which the project allows him to imagine himself in a wholly different place, freed from confinement. Among the many splendid aspects of the house, most striking is Wallace's commitment to revolutionary politics, as evidenced in the dining and conference room with its wall of revolutionary fame displaying framed pictures of prominent abolitionists John Brown, Gabriel Prosser, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and Denmark Vessey. The bottom of the swimming pool in the yard contains the Black Panther Party emblem. Wallace's experiences of militant struggle are reflected in the design of the house, which allows for a quick escape. A fireplace in the second-floor master bedroom leads to an underground bunker thirty-five feet away from the house, equipped with military essentials, foodstuffs, and first aid supplies. Wallace's description vacillates between details concerning construction materials, the size of rooms and their furnishings, and uncanny reminders of life in prison and yearnings for a just society. wonder, Wallace concludes, how psychologists would evaluate me as a person. The House That Herman Built has been exhibited widely in North America and Europe, and with the encouragement and donations of architects, designers, builders, artists, an urbanist, and a documentary filmmaker, plans to build Herman's House are underway. I interviewed Jackie Sumell in person and by email in February and March of 2010 and subsequently corresponded with Herman Wallace. In both cases, I inquired about the relationship between the activist organizing of the present and the revolutionary goals and aims of the Black Panther Party. Before I relate these two interactions, I wish first to provide some analysis of the theoretical and philosophical concerns that brought me to this work. …